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Disabling the abort sequence on SPARC systems

Most UNIX operating systems provide a method to perform a "break" or "console abort." The inherent problem when you abort a hung system is that it ceases to heartbeat in the cluster. Other cluster members may begin corrective action when they believe that the aborted node is really a failed node.

In order to preserve data integrity and to prevent the cluster from taking additional corrective actions, it is critical that the only action that you perform following an abort is to reset the system in question. Do not resume the processor as cluster membership may have changed and failover actions may already be in progress.

To remove this potential problem on Sun SPARC systems, you should alias the go function in the OpenBoot eeprom to display a message.

 To alias the go function to display a message

1. At the ok prompt, enter:

   nvedit

2. Press Ctrl+L to display the current contents of the nvramrc buffer.
3. Press Ctrl+N until the editor displays the last line of the buffer.
4. Add the following lines exactly as shown. Press Return after adding each line.

   ." Aliasing the OpenBoot 'go' command! "

   : go ." It is inadvisable to use the 'go' command in a clustered environment. " cr

   ." Please use the 'power-off' or 'reset-all' commands instead. " cr

   ." Thank you, from your friendly neighborhood sysadmin. " ;

5. Next, press Ctrl+C to exit the nvramrc editor.
6. To verify that no errors exist, type the nvrun command. You should see only the following text:

   Aliasing the OpenBoot 'go' command!

7. Type the nvstore command to commit your changes to the non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) for use in subsequent reboots.
8. After performing these commands, at reboot you see this output:

   Aliasing the OpenBoot 'go' command! go isn't unique.