Booting Diagnostics

Hardware diagnostics can be performed on all NIM clients using a diagnostic boot image from a NIM server, rather than booting from a diagnostic tape or CD-ROM. This is useful for standalone clients, because the diagnostics do not have to be installed on the local disk. Diagnostic support comes from a SPOT resource.

From Web-based System Manager

1. From the NIM container, select the standalone, diskless, or dataless machine you want to enable for diagnostics boot.
2. From the Selected menu, select Troubleshooting > Enable Diagnostic Boot.
3. Use the dialog to select a SPOT resource from which to boot.

From SMIT

Initiating the diag Operation from the Client

1. Enter the smit nim_client_op fast path.
2. Select the diag operation from the displayed list of operations.

Initiating the diag Operation from the Master

1. Enter the smit nim_mac_op fast path.
2. Select the machine object.
3. Select the diag operation from the list of operations.

From the Command Line

To perform the diag operation from the client, enter:

nimclient -o diag -a spot=SPOTName

To perform the diag operation from the master, enter:

nim -o diag -a spot=SPOTName MachineObjectName

Verifying the diag Operation

After you have enabled the client to perform a diagnostic boot, you can verify the success of the operation by querying the client's control state (Cstate).

On the client, enter:

nimclient -l -l ClientMachineObjectName

On the master, enter:

lsnim -l ClientMachineObjectName

If the operation is successful, output similar to the following is displayed:

Cstate = Diagnostic boot has been enabled

For the client to boot the diagnostics, you need to reboot the client. If it is a diskless or a dataless client, you have already defined a network adapter as the default boot device (BOOTP request), so no additional action is required. For a standalone machine, the boot list for normal boot lists the hard disk as the primary boot device, so you must follow the "Booting a Machine Over the Network" procedure.

Loading Diagnostics without the diag Operation

In addition to using the procedure in the previous section, diskless and dataless clients have another way of loading diagnostics from the network. You can boot a diskless or dataless client from the network the same way you do for normal use, but with the machine's key mode switch in the Service position. If the client's key mode switch is in the Service position at the end of the boot process, hardware diagnostics from the server's SPOT are loaded. If a standalone client boots with the key mode switch in the Service position, the diagnostics (if installed) are loaded from the hard disk.