From within

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Andrei

#65223 Tue, 04 Jan 05 03:05 PM

Changes to BootPROM environment variables from within Solaris simplifies system administration and can prevent having to perform a system boot to change these settings.

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First of all I must tell you a few things.

1. Solaris is an operating system like Windows operating system.

2. For private use, SUN allow you to use free of charge.

3. SUN is like Microsoft; the company which launches the Solaris operating system

4. All Sun systems have resident boot PROM firmware that provides basic hardware testing and initialization prior to booting. The boot PROM also enables you to boot from a wide range of devices. In addition, there is a user interface that provides several important functions.

5.The Sun boot PROM has access to a standard set of generic device drivers. The system needs these drivers to access and control the buses and the boot device to boot the system properly.

6. All versions of the OpenBootTM architecture allow a third-party board to identify itself and load its own plug-in device driver. Each device identifies its type and furnishes its plug-in device driver when requested by the Sun OpenBootTM PROM during the system hardware configuration phase of the boot process.

7. The BootPROM environment variable is one of the feature is Solaris. I would equate it to the BIOS in Microsoft world.

8. Each Sun system has a boot PROM chip.

9.The main functions of the boot PROM are to test the system hardware and to boot the operating environment. The boot PROM firmware is referred to as the monitor program.

10.The boot PROM firmware controls the operation of the system before the operating environment has been booted and the kernel is available.
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Now my question is on a single word of the sentence in question. Why do you say 'from within Solaris simplifies system administration' ?

I would simply write 'within Solaris simplifies system administration. This is not the first time that I have seen this 'from within' construction. I can't take in. On top of this, the sentence is awkward for my knowledge of English. I copied it from a discussion forum. I am not bothered about grammatical nature of the sentence. Just the word 'from within' is not in my list of words.

Andrei

Joined on Sat, May 29 2004

Full Member (387)

Constructions

eagle2l84

#65263 Tue, 04 Jan 05 09:29 PM

Let's make it a little simpler, for those non-Solaris geeks in this forum:

Using a remote control from within your car simplifies opening your garage door and can prevent getting cold to park your car.

Now using the remote control "from your car" can also mean you have to stand beside your car, while "from within your car" explictly states, that you are inside your car.

Now for Solaris, everything you can do with an up and running Solaris system, you do "from within Solaris", because you cannot "stand beside Solaris".

"from" expresses a starting point, and when used with other prepositions, this starting point can be narrowed down further:

- from amidst the trees
- from behind the wall
- from inside the house
- from within the adjacent room

cu

p.s.: Rereading your post I realize, I've missed your question about omitting "from". Well I would say "from" is necessary in this case, as the BootPROM variables are actually outside Solaris (or not even part of Solaris, as they still exist, when you run Linux on your Sun system). The variables exist in the NVRAM and you change them FROM (somewhere), but WITHIN the NVRAM. And in this case (somewhere) is the running Solaris OS, hence "from within Solaris".

eagle2l84

Joined on Mon, Jan 3 2005

Germany

New Member (48)

Prepositions

Andrei

#65474 Wed, 05 Jan 05 05:59 PM

eagle2184, thanks for the answer.

I must say that you are good at English grammar. After reading your reply, I could say you are excellent at English grammar.

You have answered cleary and simply.

It seems you know Solaris or you are using Solaris. BootPROM is a part of the Solaris package. If you install Solaris on a Sun-sparc computer, you would see the BootPROM.

Andrei

eagle2l84

#65718 Thu, 06 Jan 05 12:03 PM

Thanks for praising my Grammar, though I doubt I deserve it.

However, BootPROM or to be exact the "OpenBoot PROM" is part of the Sparc Hardware Architecture. It is there from the very beginning, that is even if you never ever had installed Solaris before on this machine. Also even if you install Solaris on a x86 system, you will still not have a BootPROM there. So the BootPROM is indeed NOT a part of the Solaris package. (quoting from Administering the Boot PROM : "OpenBoot is independent of the Solaris operating environment; output normally goes to the system console. The monitor is under the control of OpenBoot rather than the operating system because there might not be any operating system running yet.")

But the Solaris OS provides a few commands/tools to access the NVRAM from within a shell, and therefore allows you to administer the OpenBoot PROM by other means than the OpenBoot Prompt (aka "ok prompt"), which can be reached by STOP-A on a Sun Keyboard or through a Break signal, if connected to the primary terminal. And although you can resume OS operation after these key sequences by running the OpenBoot command "go", it is considered an unsafe operation and you are expected to reboot your system immediately after resuming. Therefore the Solaris provided utilities are the only safe way to alter the OpenBoot PROM without the need to immediately reboot your system, though this may still be required to activate your changes.

And yes, I have good knowledge of Sun hardware and the Solaris OS. I operated them for a living for several years, starting with SS5 and up to E10K/E15K and from Solaris 2.1 to 9 respectively.

cu

eagle2l84

Grammar, Resume, Quoting

Andrei

#65857 Thu, 06 Jan 05 06:15 PM

Thanks eagle

The website you have given me is very interesting. For some reason, i have missed this site. It seems you can't go into the website and see whether they have more interesting stuff. You are not allowed to go there.

Andrei