TechNote: Modifying the CD-ROM nvalias on an Ultra 10 (IDE based) System


If you have an Ultra 5/10 with 2 IDE hard drives with DiskSuite mirroring and a CD-ROM, then the "cdrom" device alias in the EEPROM needs modification. DiskSuite requires one IDE drive to be the master on the primary controller and the other IDE drive to be the master on the secondary controller. This forces you to make the CD-ROM a slave on one of the two controllers. At this point, the factory "nvalias" for the CD-ROM is broken and you can't boot from CD-ROM. You just have to modify the "cdrom" device alias in EEPROM.

Factory setting (display using the devalias command:

cdrom	/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@2,0:f

If the CD-ROM is a slave on the primary controller:

ok nvalias cdrom /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@1,0:f

If the CD-ROM is a slave on the secondary controller:

ok nvalias cdrom /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@3,0:f
Now you can boot from CD-ROM using the new alias just created. For example, boot cdrom.