[OpenIndiana-discuss] catching hell getting booted

[Harry Putnam]

Gary Mills <gary_mills at fastmail.fm> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 03, 2021 at 01:06:12PM -0500, Harry Putnam wrote:
>> I've been running an hp xw8600 for several years and for about 5-6 of
>> those yrs running openindiana OS.
>> 
>> A month ago or so I shutdown OI to change out a couple of disks.
>> 
>> Once I did that I have not been able to use any of the oi installation
>> media I've made up.  Both usb stick and DVD fails to boot,  No matter
>> how I set the boot order. And even though those  same stick media will
>> boot my HP Z800 to live media for OI install.
>> 
>> I've tried all I can think, changing usb ports,  Trying ISO from CD.
>> The xw8600 has two of those,  I set the boot order to CDrom first but it
>> goes right buy with out a response and tries to boot from disk.
>
> It sounds as if you are not really setting the boot order in the BIOS.
> Could it really that simple?  HP does do some funny things with their
> BIOS.  Are you saving your changes after you make them?  Does the BIOS
> show the new boot order after the boot fails?

Here is how real the boot order is: First I can look at the setting in
bios. Save and Close bios... then reopen and see my setting is still
there.  Further there is a switch early in boot where you can click F9
and wind up at a boot prompt where again I can see the order is correct.

Currently I'm tying to install from and older version 2018.10.  Burnded to DVD
today.  When the boot prompt opens I see CDrom at the top , usb next
then hhd.  I press cdrom... it pauses a few moments then reverts to
the install on hard disk of ubuntu (zfs on root).

It tell me there is no image on the cdrom.  I put it on a different
HP, this one HP Z800... and I'll give a guess what happens... it boots
into the OI on the cdrom.

I can assure you I have set the boot order depending on what media I'm
attempting. 

> Some systems will not boot from USB, but in that case they will still
> boot from a CD reader.  I don't think that's your problem.

So far that has not happened here.  Except some years ago on this same
host when I made my initial install, clear back to build 147.

And a couple of months ago, I burned a USB stick with ubuntu on it.
After getting sick of dicking around trying to install OI

Booting from that stick right into ubuntu installation immediately.

I want to say it points to our software being a problem where others
work. But, I'm so unskilled as to be nearly certain that the fault is
right in myu pea brain somewhere.