[OpenIndiana-discuss] No boot from iso on HP xw8600

[Harry Putnam]

Setup: Server and Desktop ISO, attempting to boot an HP xw8600
A 2x Xeon (5470) with 32 GB ram and 2 1tb hdd.

I've attempted booting an HP xw8600 from both server and desktop
(freshly downloaded and burned) isos.

In either case I come to one of those offers to drop me into maintenance
mode and requests uid and passwd, or press Control + d.

Pressing the `Control + d' option results in this message:
  Requesting System maintenance mode
  (see /lib/svc/share/README for more information)
  Console login service[s] cannot run

And back comes the offer to enter a uid and passwd or press Control + d
for maintenance mode.

Using the stock uid - passwd, root - openindiana, gets me into
maintenance mode with these messages:

  July 20 00:46:40 su, `su root' succeeded  for root on /dev/console
  -bash /usr/sbin/quota - no such file or directory
 openindiana (powered by illumos) SunOS 5.11 oi 151_a8 July 2013
  -bash /bin/mail - no such file or directory
  -bash /usr/bin/hostname - no such file or directory

  root #

If I run `ls -al' I see a listing of /root (.bashrc and .profile)
followed by 
   /usr/bin/hostname - no such file or directory...

Other basic commands seem to work, such as pwd etc.

But trying something like `format' fails miserably with:
 -bash - format command not found.
 -bash - /usr/bin/hostname - no such file or directory.

Where is the `format' command usually hiding.  /bin/, /usr/bin, /sbin,
/usr/sbin, all seem to be present and accounted for... but no `format'. 

`format' is present at /usr/sbin/format on an oi vm I have running, but
apparently is not included on this `Live CD' ISO.

Is there something I can do here to help the boot. Or, is it likely to be
something else causing the trouble? 

PS - both ISO's work fine when tried on another host and installing
into a vm.  So at least any thoughts of corruption or the like should
be laid to rest.