freebsd/sys/boot/common/loader.8

.\" Copyright (c) 1999 Daniel C. Sobral
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\"
.Dd September 30, 2004
.Dt LOADER 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm loader
.Nd kernel bootstrapping final stage
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The program called
.Nm
is the final stage of
.Fx Ns 's
kernel bootstrapping process.
On IA32 (i386) architectures, it is a
.Pa BTX
client.
It is linked statically to
.Xr libstand 3
and usually located in the directory
.Pa /boot .
.Pp
It provides a scripting language that can be used to
automate tasks, do pre-configuration or assist in recovery
procedures.
This scripting language is roughly divided in
two main components.
The smaller one is a set of commands
designed for direct use by the casual user, called "builtin
commands" for historical reasons.
The main drive behind these commands is user-friendliness.
The bigger component is an
.Tn ANS
Forth compatible Forth interpreter based on FICL, by
.An John Sadler .
.Pp
During initialization,
.Nm
will probe for a console and set the
.Va console
variable, or set it to serial console
.Pq Dq comconsole
if the previous boot stage used that.
Then, devices are probed,
.Va currdev
and
.Va loaddev
are set, and
.Va LINES
is set to 24.
Next,
.Tn FICL
is initialized, the builtin words are added to its vocabulary, and
.Pa /boot/boot.4th
is processed if it exists.
No disk switching is possible while that file is being read.
The inner interpreter
.Nm
will use with
.Tn FICL
is then set to
.Ic interpret ,
which is
.Tn FICL Ns 's
default.
After that,
.Pa /boot/loader.rc
is processed if available, and, failing that,
.Pa /boot/boot.conf
is read for historical reasons.
These files are processed through the
.Ic include
command, which reads all of them into memory before processing them,
making disk changes possible.
.Pp
At this point, if an
.Ic autoboot
has not been tried, and if
.Va autoboot_delay
is not set to
.Dq NO
(not case sensitive), then an
.Ic autoboot
will be tried.
If the system gets past this point,
.Va prompt
will be set and
.Nm
will engage interactive mode.
.Sh BUILTIN COMMANDS
In
.Nm ,
builtin commands take parameters from the command line.
Presently,
the only way to call them from a script is by using
.Pa evaluate
on a string.
If an error condition occurs, an exception will be generated,
which can be intercepted using
.Tn ANS
Forth exception handling
words.
If not intercepted, an error message will be displayed and
the interpreter's state will be reset, emptying the stack and restoring
interpreting mode.
.Pp
The builtin commands available are:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
.It Ic autoboot Op Ar seconds
Proceeds to bootstrap the system after a number of seconds, if not
interrupted by the user.
Displays a countdown prompt
warning the user the system is about to be booted,
unless interrupted by a key press.
The kernel will be loaded first if necessary.
Defaults to 10 seconds.
.Pp
.It Ic bcachestat
Displays statistics about disk cache usage.
For depuration only.
.Pp
.It Ic boot
.It Ic boot Ar kernelname Op Cm ...
.It Ic boot Fl flag Cm ...
Immediately proceeds to bootstrap the system, loading the kernel
if necessary.
Any flags or arguments are passed to the kernel, but they
must precede the kernel name, if a kernel name is provided.
.Pp
.Em WARNING :
The behavior of this builtin is changed if
.Xr loader.4th 8
is loaded.
.Pp
.It Ic echo Xo
.Op Fl n
.Op Aq message
.Xc
Displays text on the screen.
A new line will be printed unless
.Fl n
is specified.
.Pp
.It Ic heap
Displays memory usage statistics.
For debugging purposes only.
.Pp
.It Ic help Op topic Op subtopic
Shows help messages read from
.Pa /boot/loader.help .
The special topic
.Em index
will list the topics available.
.Pp
.It Ic include Ar file Op Ar
Process script files.
Each file, in turn, is completely read into memory,
and then each of its lines is passed to the command line interpreter.
If any error is returned by the interpreter, the include
command aborts immediately, without reading any other files, and
returns an error itself (see
.Sx ERRORS ) .
.Pp
.It Ic load Xo
.Op Fl t Ar type
.Ar file Cm ...
.Xc
Loads a kernel, kernel loadable module (kld), or file of opaque
contents tagged as being of the type
.Ar type .
Kernel and modules can be either in a.out or ELF format.
Any arguments passed after the name of the file to be loaded
will be passed as arguments to that file.
Currently, argument passing does not work for the kernel.
.Pp
.It Ic ls Xo
.Op Fl l
.Op Ar path
.Xc
Displays a listing of files in the directory
.Ar path ,
or the root directory if
.Ar path
is not specified.
If
.Fl l
is specified, file sizes will be shown too.
.Pp
.It Ic lsdev Op Fl v
Lists all of the devices from which it may be possible to load modules.
If
.Fl v
is specified, more details are printed.
.Pp
.It Ic lsmod Op Fl v
Displays loaded modules.
If
.Fl v
is specified, more details are shown.
.Pp
.It Ic more Ar file Op Ar
Display the files specified, with a pause at each
.Va LINES
displayed.
.Pp
.It Ic pnpscan Op Fl v
Scans for Plug-and-Play devices.
This is not functional at present.
.Pp
.It Ic read Xo
.Op Fl t Ar seconds
.Op Fl p Ar prompt
.Op Va variable
.Xc
Reads a line of input from the terminal, storing it in
.Va variable
if specified.
A timeout can be specified with
.Fl t ,
though it will be canceled at the first key pressed.
A prompt may also be displayed through the
.Fl p
flag.
.Pp
.It Ic reboot
Immediately reboots the system.
.Pp
.It Ic set Ar variable
.It Ic set Ar variable Ns = Ns Ar value
Set loader's environment variables.
.Pp
.It Ic show Op Va variable
Displays the specified variable's value, or all variables and their
values if
.Va variable
is not specified.
.Pp
.It Ic unload
Remove all modules from memory.
.Pp
.It Ic unset Va variable
Removes
.Va variable
from the environment.
.Pp
.It Ic \&?
Lists available commands.
.El
.Ss BUILTIN ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The
.Nm
has actually two different kinds of
.Sq environment
variables.
There are ANS Forth's
.Em environmental queries ,
and a separate space of environment variables used by builtins, which
are not directly available to Forth words.
It is the latter type that this section covers.
.Pp
Environment variables can be set and unset through the
.Ic set
and
.Ic unset
builtins, and can have their values interactively examined through the
use of the
.Ic show
builtin.
Their values can also be accessed as described in
.Sx BUILTIN PARSER .
.Pp
Notice that these environment variables are not inherited by any shell
after the system has been booted.
.Pp
A few variables are set automatically by
.Nm .
Others can affect the behavior of either
.Nm
or the kernel at boot.
Some options may require a value,
while others define behavior just by being set.
Both types of builtin variables are described below.
.Bl -tag -width bootfile
.It Va acpi_load
Unset this to disable automatic loading of the ACPI module.
See also
.Va hint.acpi.0.disabled
in
.Xr device.hints 5 .
.It Va autoboot_delay
Number of seconds
.Ic autoboot
will wait before booting.
If this variable is not defined,
.Ic autoboot
will default to 10 seconds.
.Pp
If set to
.Dq NO ,
no
.Ic autoboot
will be automatically attempted after processing
.Pa /boot/loader.rc ,
though explicit
.Ic autoboot Ns 's
will be processed normally, defaulting to 10 seconds delay.
.It Va boot_askname
Instructs the kernel to prompt the user for the name of the root device
when the kernel is booted.
.It Va boot_cdrom
Instructs the kernel to try to mount the root file system from CD-ROM.
.It Va boot_ddb
Instructs the kernel to start in the DDB debugger, rather than
proceeding to initialize when booted.
.It Va boot_gdb
Selects gdb-remote mode for the kernel debugger by default.
.It Va boot_multicons
Enables multiple console support in the kernel early on boot.
In a running system, console configuration can be manipulated
by the
.Xr conscontrol 8
utility.
.It Va boot_serial
Force the use of a serial console even when an internal console
is present.
.It Va boot_single
Prevents the kernel from initiating a multi-user startup; instead,
a single-user mode will be entered when the kernel has finished
device probing.
.It Va boot_userconfig
Requests that the kernel's interactive device configuration program
be run when the kernel is booted.
Currently a no-op.
.It Va boot_verbose
Setting this variable causes extra debugging information to be printed
by the kernel during the boot phase.
.It Va bootfile
List of semicolon-separated search path for bootable kernels.
The default is
.Dq Li kernel .
.It Va console
Defines the current console.
.It Va currdev
Selects the default device.
Syntax for devices is odd.
.It Va init_path
Sets the list of binaries which the kernel will try to run as the initial
process.
The first matching binary is used.
The default list is
.Dq Li /sbin/init:/sbin/oinit:/sbin/init.bak:/stand/sysinstall .
.It Va interpret
Has the value
.Dq Li OK
if the Forth's current state is interpreting.
.It Va LINES
Define the number of lines on the screen, to be used by the pager.
.It Va module_path
Sets the list of directories which will be searched for modules
named in a load command or implicitly required by a dependency.
The default value for this variable is
.Dq Li /boot/kernel;/boot/modules .
.It Va num_ide_disks
Sets the number of IDE disks as a workaround for some problems in
finding the root disk at boot.
This has been deprecated in favor of
.Va root_disk_unit .
.It Va prompt
Value of
.Nm Ns 's
prompt.
Defaults to
.Dq Li "${interpret}" .
If variable
.Va prompt
is unset, the default prompt is
.Ql > .
.It Va root_disk_unit
If the code which detects the disk unit number for the root disk is
confused, e.g.\& by a mix of SCSI and IDE disks, or IDE disks with
gaps in the sequence (e.g.\& no primary slave), the unit number can
be forced by setting this variable.
.It Va rootdev
By default the value of
.Va currdev
is used to set the root file system
when the kernel is booted.
This can be overridden by setting
.Va rootdev
explicitly.
.El
.Pp
Other variables are used to override kernel tunable parameters.
The following tunables are available:
.Bl -tag -width Va
.It Va hw.physmem
Limit the amount of physical memory the system will use.
By default the size is in bytes, but the
.Cm k , K , m , M , g
and
.Cm G
suffixes
are also accepted and indicate kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes
respectively.
An invalid suffix will result in the variable being ignored by the
kernel.
.It Va hw.pci.enable_io_modes
Enable PCI resources which are left off by some BIOSes or are not
enabled correctly by the device driver.
Tunable value set to ON (1) by default, but this may cause problems
with some peripherals.
.It Va kern.maxusers
Set the size of a number of statically allocated system tables; see
.Xr tuning 7
for a description of how to select an appropriate value for this
tunable.
When set, this tunable replaces the value declared in the kernel
compile-time configuration file.
.It Va kern.ipc.nmbclusters
Set the number of mbuf clusters to be allocated.
The value cannot be set below the default
determined when the kernel was compiled.
Modifies
.Dv NMBCLUSTERS .
.It Va kern.ipc.nsfbufs
Set the number of
.Xr sendfile 2
buffers to be allocated.
Overrides
.Dv NSFBUFS .
.It Va kern.maxswzone
Limits the amount of KVM to be used to hold swap
meta information, which directly governs the
maximum amount of swap the system can support.
This value is specified in bytes of KVA space
and defaults to around 70MBytes.
Care should be taken
to not reduce this value such that the actual
amount of configured swap exceeds 1/2 the
kernel-supported swap.
The default 70MB allows
the kernel to support a maximum of (approximately)
14GB of configured swap.
Only mess around with
this parameter if you need to greatly extend the
KVM reservation for other resources such as the
buffer cache or
.Dv NMBCLUSTERS .
Modifies
.Dv VM_SWZONE_SIZE_MAX .
.It Va kern.maxbcache
Limits the amount of KVM reserved for use by the
buffer cache, specified in bytes.
The default maximum is 200MB.
This parameter is used to
prevent the buffer cache from eating too much
KVM in large-memory machine configurations.
Only mess around with this parameter if you need to
greatly extend the KVM reservation for other resources
such as the swap zone or
.Dv NMBCLUSTERS .
Note that
the NBUF parameter will override this limit.
Modifies
.Dv VM_BCACHE_SIZE_MAX .
.It Va machdep.disable_mtrrs
Disable the use of i686 MTRRs (x86 only).
.It Va net.inet.tcp.tcbhashsize
Overrides the compile-time set value of
.Dv TCBHASHSIZE
or the preset default of 512.
Must be a power of 2.
.It Va vm.kmem_size
Sets the size of kernel memory (bytes).
This overrides the value determined when the kernel was compiled.
Modifies
.Dv VM_KMEM_SIZE .
.El
.Ss BUILTIN PARSER
When a builtin command is executed, the rest of the line is taken
by it as arguments, and it is processed by a special parser which
is not used for regular Forth commands.
.Pp
This special parser applies the following rules to the parsed text:
.Pp
.Bl -enum
.It
All backslash characters are preprocessed.
.Bl -bullet
.It
\eb , \ef , \er , \en and \et are processed as in C.
.It
\es is converted to a space.
.It
\ev is converted to
.Tn ASCII
11.
.It
\ez is just skipped.
Useful for things like
.Dq \e0xf\ez\e0xf .
.It
\e0xN and \e0xNN are replaced by the hex N or NN.
.It
\eNNN is replaced by the octal NNN
.Tn ASCII
character.
.It
\e" , \e' and \e$ will escape these characters, preventing them from
receiving special treatment in Step 2, described below.
.It
\e\e will be replaced with a single \e .
.It
In any other occurrence, backslash will just be removed.
.El
.It
Every string between non-escaped quotes or double-quotes will be treated
as a single word for the purposes of the remaining steps.
.It
Replace any
.Li $VARIABLE
or
.Li ${VARIABLE}
with the value of the environment variable
.Va VARIABLE .
.It
Space-delimited arguments are passed to the called builtin command.
Spaces can also be escaped through the use of \e\e .
.El
.Pp
An exception to this parsing rule exists, and is described in
.Sx BUILTINS AND FORTH .
.Ss BUILTINS AND FORTH
All builtin words are state-smart, immediate words.
If interpreted, they behave exactly as described previously.
If they are compiled, though,
they extract their arguments from the stack instead of the command line.
.Pp
If compiled, the builtin words expect to find, at execution time, the
following parameters on the stack:
.D1 Ar addrN lenN ... addr2 len2 addr1 len1 N
where
.Ar addrX lenX
are strings which will compose the command line that will be parsed
into the builtin's arguments.
Internally, these strings are concatenated in from 1 to N,
with a space put between each one.
.Pp
If no arguments are passed, a 0
.Em must
be passed, even if the builtin accepts no arguments.
.Pp
While this behavior has benefits, it has its trade-offs.
If the execution token of a builtin is acquired (through
.Ic '
or
.Ic ['] ) ,
and then passed to
.Ic catch
or
.Ic execute ,
the builtin behavior will depend on the system state
.Bf Em
at the time
.Ic catch
or
.Ic execute
is processed!
.Ef
This is particularly annoying for programs that want or need to
handle exceptions.
In this case, the use of a proxy is recommended.
For example:
.Dl : (boot) boot ;
.Sh FICL
.Tn FICL
is a Forth interpreter written in C, in the form of a forth
virtual machine library that can be called by C functions and vice
versa.
.Pp
In
.Nm ,
each line read interactively is then fed to
.Tn FICL ,
which may call
.Nm
back to execute the builtin words.
The builtin
.Ic include
will also feed
.Tn FICL ,
one line at a time.
.Pp
The words available to
.Tn FICL
can be classified into four groups.
The
.Tn ANS
Forth standard words, extra
.Tn FICL
words, extra
.Fx
words, and the builtin commands;
the latter were already described.
The
.Tn ANS
Forth standard words are listed in the
.Sx STANDARDS
section.
The words falling in the two other groups are described in the
following subsections.
.Ss FICL EXTRA WORDS
.Bl -tag -width wid-set-super
.It Ic .env
.It Ic .ver
.It Ic -roll
.It Ic 2constant
.It Ic >name
.It Ic body>
.It Ic compare
This is the STRING word set's
.Ic compare .
.It Ic compile-only
.It Ic endif
.It Ic forget-wid
.It Ic parse-word
.It Ic sliteral
This is the STRING word set's
.Ic sliteral .
.It Ic wid-set-super
.It Ic w@
.It Ic w!
.It Ic x.
.It Ic empty
.It Ic cell-
.It Ic -rot
.El
.Ss FREEBSD EXTRA WORDS
.Bl -tag -width XXXXXXXX
.It Ic \&$ Pq --
Evaluates the remainder of the input buffer, after having printed it first.
.It Ic \&% Pq --
Evaluates the remainder of the input buffer under a
.Ic catch
exception guard.
.It Ic .#
Works like
.Ic .
but without outputting a trailing space.
.It Ic fclose Pq Ar fd --
Closes a file.
.It Ic fkey Pq Ar fd -- char
Reads a single character from a file.
.It Ic fload Pq Ar fd --
Processes a file
.Em fd .
.It Ic fopen Pq Ar addr len mode Li -- Ar fd
Opens a file.
Returns a file descriptor, or \-1 in case of failure.
The
.Ar mode
parameter selects whether the file is to be opened for read access, write
access, or both.
The constants
.Dv O_RDONLY , O_WRONLY ,
and
.Dv O_RDWR
are defined in
.Pa /boot/support.4th ,
indicating read only, write only, and read-write access, respectively.
.It Xo
.Ic fread
.Pq Ar fd addr len -- len'
.Xc
Tries to read
.Em len
bytes from file
.Em fd
into buffer
.Em addr .
Returns the actual number of bytes read, or -1 in case of error or end of
file.
.It Ic heap? Pq -- Ar cells
Return the space remaining in the dictionary heap, in cells.
This is not related to the heap used by dynamic memory allocation words.
.It Ic inb Pq Ar port -- char
Reads a byte from a port.
.It Ic key Pq -- Ar char
Reads a single character from the console.
.It Ic key? Pq -- Ar flag
Returns
.Ic true
if there is a character available to be read from the console.
.It Ic ms Pq Ar u --
Waits
.Em u
microseconds.
.It Ic outb Pq Ar port char --
Writes a byte to a port.
.It Ic seconds Pq -- Ar u
Returns the number of seconds since midnight.
.It Ic tib> Pq -- Ar addr len
Returns the remainder of the input buffer as a string on the stack.
.It Ic trace! Pq Ar flag --
Activates or deactivates tracing.
Does not work with
.Ic catch .
.El
.Ss FREEBSD DEFINED ENVIRONMENTAL QUERIES
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It arch-i386
.Ic TRUE
if the architecture is IA32.
.It arch-alpha
.Ic TRUE
if the architecture is AXP.
.It FreeBSD_version
.Fx
version at compile time.
.It loader_version
.Nm
version.
.El
.Ss SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /boot/defaults/loader.conf -compact
.It Pa /boot/loader
.Nm
itself.
.It Pa /boot/boot.4th
Additional
.Tn FICL
initialization.
.It Pa /boot/boot.conf
.Nm
bootstrapping script.
Deprecated.
.It Pa /boot/defaults/loader.conf
.It Pa /boot/loader.conf
.It Pa /boot/loader.conf.local
.Nm
configuration files, as described in
.Xr loader.conf 5 .
.It Pa /boot/loader.rc
.Nm
bootstrapping script.
.It Pa /boot/loader.help
Loaded by
.Ic help .
Contains the help messages.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Boot in single user mode:
.Pp
.Dl boot -s
.Pp
Load the kernel, a splash screen, and then autoboot in five seconds.
Notice that a kernel must be loaded before any other
.Ic load
command is attempted.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
load kernel
load splash_bmp
load -t splash_image_data /boot/chuckrulez.bmp
autoboot 5
.Ed
.Pp
Set the disk unit of the root device to 2, and then boot.
This would be needed in a system with two IDE disks,
with the second IDE disk hardwired to wd2 instead of wd1.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
set root_disk_unit=2
boot /kernel
.Ed
.Pp
See also:
.Bl -tag -width /usr/share/examples/bootforth/X
.It Pa /boot/loader.4th
Extra builtin-like words.
.It Pa /boot/support.4th
.Pa loader.conf
processing words.
.It Pa /usr/share/examples/bootforth/
Assorted examples.
.El
.Sh ERRORS
The following values are thrown by
.Nm :
.Bl -tag -width XXXXX -offset indent
.It 100
Any type of error in the processing of a builtin.
.It -1
.Ic Abort
executed.
.It -2
.Ic Abort"
executed.
.It -56
.Ic Quit
executed.
.It -256
Out of interpreting text.
.It -257
Need more text to succeed -- will finish on next run.
.It -258
.Ic Bye
executed.
.It -259
Unspecified error.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr libstand 3 ,
.Xr loader.conf 5 ,
.Xr tuning 7 ,
.Xr boot 8 ,
.Xr btxld 8
.Sh STANDARDS
For the purposes of ANS Forth compliance, loader is an
.Bf Em
ANS Forth System with Environmental Restrictions, Providing
.Ef
.Bf Li
.No .( ,
.No :noname ,
.No ?do ,
parse, pick, roll, refill, to, value, \e, false, true,
.No <> ,
.No 0<> ,
compile\&, , erase, nip, tuck
.Ef
.Em and
.Li marker
.Bf Em
from the Core Extensions word set, Providing the Exception Extensions
word set, Providing the Locals Extensions word set, Providing the
Memory-Allocation Extensions word set, Providing
.Ef
.Bf Li
\&.s,
bye, forget, see, words,
\&[if],
\&[else]
.Ef
.Em and
.Li [then]
.Bf Em
from the Programming-Tools extension word set, Providing the
Search-Order extensions word set.
.Ef
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
first appeared in
.Fx 3.1 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
was written by
.An Michael Smith Aq msmith@FreeBSD.org .
.Pp
.Tn FICL
was written by
.An John Sadler Aq john_sadler@alum.mit.edu .
.Sh BUGS
The
.Ic expect
and
.Ic accept
words will read from the input buffer instead of the console.
The latter will be fixed, but the former will not.