NetApp Engineer

One of the most useful commands. This can save you in certain scenarios, and can be a time saver in others (will go into this later).

Once you have the networking setup (use ifconfig), then point netboot at a http or tftp server that has a copy of the ONTAP netboot image. When the system has booted, you still need to install ONTAP fully.

CFE> help netboot

  SUMMARY

     Boots the supplied URL off the network.

  USAGE

     netboot <URL>
     Where <URL> is either <http or tftp>://<server>/<path to file>

     netboot loads an image of Data ONTAP or Diagnostics off of the network
     and executes it. It loads the image from the user supplied URL.
     The URL can be either a TFTP or an HTTP network path.

Pretty useful if troubleshooting hardware devices, or you just need to see what is installed in the system. The below output is from a FAS3020 with no PCI cards, and a RLM card.

CFE> show devices
Device Name          Description
——————-  ———————————————————
rlm0a                Remote LAN Module (RLM): Console at 0×3F8, RLM at 0×2F8
eeprom0a             ATMEL AT28BV256 EEPROM at 0×000C0000 offset 0×00000000
agent0a              NetApp Agent 0×99 version 15 at address 0xAE
lcd0a                i2c driver on I2C dev 0xC8000
ide0.0               PCI IDE disk unit 0 at I/O 1030
e0c                  Dual 10/100/1000 Ethernet at 0xE0D80000 (00-a0-98-08-17-80)
e0d                  Dual 10/100/1000 Ethernet at 0xE0DA0000 (00-a0-98-08-17-81)
e0a                  Dual 10/100/1000 Ethernet at 0xE0A80000 (00-a0-98-08-17-82)
e0b                  Dual 10/100/1000 Ethernet at 0xE0AA0000 (00-a0-98-08-17-83)
clock0a              ISA RTC at 0×70 (index) and 0×71 (target)
flash0a              New CFI flash at 0xFFC00000 offset 0×00200000 size 2048KB
flash0b              New CFI flash at 0xFFC00000 offset 0×00000000 size 2048KB

Pretty straight forward. Use one to set and environmental variable, and one to unset and environmental variable! To get all the environmental variables you can use printenv

     unsetenv varname

     This command deletes an environment variable from memory and also
     removes it from the NVRAM device (if present).

     setenv varname value

     This command sets an environment variable.  By default, an environment variable
     is stored only in memory and will not be retained across system restart.
     if an NVRAM device is present, the variable is also stored there and
     is persistent across reboot.

These are 2 different commands, but they are closely connected.

Use set date to set the date (set date mm/dd/yy)

Use set time to set the time (set time hh:mm:ss)

show date and show time are the same command really and both give the same output.

CFE> show date
Current date & time is: 03/03/2009  11:33:26
CFE> show time
Current date & time is: 03/03/2009  11:33:27

If you have a completely dead system and need to re-install ONTAP onto the flash card as well as the disks, then you’ll need to netboot the system (or other reasons you need to setup the networking!). The first step is to setup the networking for this.

CFE> help ifconfig

  SUMMARY

     Configure the Ethernet interface

  USAGE

     ifconfig device [options..]

     Activates and configures the specified Ethernet interface and sets its
     IP address, netmask, and other parameters.  The -auto switch can be used
     to set this information via DHCP.

  OPTIONS

     -auto        Configure interface automatically via DHCP
     -off         Deactivate the specified interface
     -addr=*      Specifies the IP address of the interface
     -mask=*      Specifies the subnet mask for the interface
     -gw=*        Specifies the gateway address for the interface
     -dns=*       Specifies the name server address for the interface
     -domain=*    Specifies the default domain for name service queries
     -speed=*     Sets the interface speed (auto, 10fdx, 10hdx, 100fdx, 100hdx, 1000fdx, 1000hdx)
     -loopback=*  Sets the loopback mode (off,internal,external)  External loopback causes the phy to be placed in loopback mode
     -hwaddr=*    Sets the hardware address (overrides environment)

     arp [-d] [ip-address] [dest-address]

     Without any parameters, the arp command will display the contents of the
     arp table.  With two parameters, arp can be used to add permanent arp
     entries to the table (permanent arp entries do not time out)

     -d           Delete the specified ARP entry.  If specified, ip-address
                  may be * to delete all entries.

CFE> flash

     flash [options] filename [flashdevice]

     Copies data from a source file name or device to a flash memory device.
     The source device can be a disk file (FAT filesystem), a remote file
     (TFTP) or a flash device.  The destination device may be a flash or eeprom.

     -noerase     Don’t erase flash before writing
     -offset=*    Begin programming at this offset in the flash device
     -size=*      Size of source device when programming from flash to flash
     -noversion   Skip version checking. By default, CFE rejects older firmware
     -noheader    Override header verification, flash binary without checking

There is a small subset of commands that can be access only from the boot prompt of the system. These are useful in some circumstances, but the possibilities are quite limited. In the below examples I am using a system that shows a “CFE” prompt, but this may be “Loader” or something else depending on your system.

CFE> help
Available commands:

version             Print CFE version.
update_flash        Updates the boot flash with the firmware image on the PC-Card.
netboot             Boots the supplied URL off the network.
boot_diags          Boots the diagnostic image off of the PC-Card.
boot_backup         Boots the backup image of Data ONTAP off of the PC-Card.
boot_primary        Boots the primary image of Data ONTAP off of the PC-Card.
boot_ontap          Boots the correct image of Data ONTAP
bye                 Reset the system.
flash               Update a flash memory device
autoboot            Automatic system bootstrap.
go                  Start a previously loaded program.
boot                Load an executable file into memory and execute it
load                Load an executable file into memory without executing it
set date            Set current date
set time            Set current time
ping                Ping a remote IP host.
arp                 Display or modify the ARP Table
ifconfig            Configure the Ethernet interface
show date           Display current time according to RTC
show time           Display current time according to RTC
show devices        Display information about the installed devices.
unsetenv            Delete an environment variable.
set-defaults        Reset all system environmental variables to default values.
setenv              Set an environment variable.
printenv            Display the environment variables
help                Obtain help for CFE commands