Creating and booting from a bare metal USB drive

Requirements:

     The hardware must include a USB 2.0 port.

     Open Boot firmware must be 4.27 or greater.

     Before plugging in the USB drive, make certain Volume Management is disabled. The command for this is

svcadm disable volfs

To generate bare metal media on a USB drive, perform the following steps:

1        Run the mkbmcd utility on the client which is found in <INSTALLDIR>/bin/mkbmcd, where <INSTALLDIR> is /usr/bp by default.

2        Initiate the creation utility by entering the following at the command prompt:

/usr/bp/bin/mkbmcd

3        When prompted, indicate y when asked if you want to use USB Bare Metal Recovery.

Note: This will erase all content on the drive.

4        When prompted by the mkbmcd utility, enter the temporary workspace directory, which requires 550MB of space.

5        When prompted, enter the client and backup system information.

6        When prompted, select the desired USB drive by entering the corresponding number.

Note: Device Type must be removable disk.

7        When prompted, confirm the listed information and begin the formatting process by entering y.

Once the process is complete and the drive has been formatted, the following message appears:

Please follow the instructions below to boot from the USB drive:

8        Remove the USB drive from your machine.

Enter ‘# init 0’ to get to the ok prompt.

9        Plug in the USB drive and enter ‘probe-scsi-all’.

10    ‘Locate the SCSI address for the Removable Disk Entry.

Append

/disk@0,0

to the end of the SCSI address.

Example:

/pci@0/ pci@0/ pci@1/ pci@0/ pci@1/ pci@0/usb@0,2/storage@3/disk@0,0

11    Boot the USB drive using the SCSI address with

/disk@0,0

appended to it.

Example:

boot /pci@0/ pci@0/ pci@1/ pci@0/ pci@1/ pci@0/usb@0,2/storage@3/disk@0,0

The system boots from the USB drive and starts the Bare Metal Application. You must have a master backup of this system before you can perform a bare metal restore.