Note: Consult other DCE component documentation to determine the impact of rebooting on other DCE components.
Rebooting a server machine, while not difficult, should never be the first method used to solve DFS-related problems. You should reboot a server machine only if no other recourse is available, such as when a process that is not controlled by the BOS Server fails. Rebooting causes a service outage. If the machine being rebooted is the only Fileset Database machine, it can make the entire file system unavailable to all users; if the machine is a File Server machine, people using filesets located only on that machine (for example, user filesets) cannot access those filesets.
To prepare a server machine for powering down, you can issue the bos shutdown command to have the BOS Server shut down the other server processes that are running on the machine; the BOS Server does not shut itself down - it terminates correctly when you turn off the machine. You can then reboot the machine by issuing the machine's reboot command (or its equivalent).
You can reboot a machine from either the local console or the console of a remote machine (via telnet or an appropriate program). The two approaches are essentially the same, with the exception that rebooting from the local console lets you track the status of the reboot as it occurs, which you cannot do with remote rebooting. Regardless of the reboot method you use, server processes restart automatically after the reboot if the machine's initialization file (/etc/rc or its equivalent) contains the following instruction to restart the BOS Server:
dcelocal/bin/bosserver
To reboot a server machine, do the following:
1. To reboot from the console of a remote machine, open a remote connection to the machine you want to reboot (using telnet or an appropriate program). To reboot from the local console of the machine you want to reboot, omit this step.
2. Verify that you have the necessary privilege. You must be included in the admin.bos file on the machine to be rebooted. If necessary, issue the bos lsadmin command to check.
3. Issue the bos shutdown command to prepare to power down the machine to be rebooted. This command directs the BOS Server to shut down the other DFS server processes that are running on the machine by changing their status flags in the BOS Server's memory to NotRun. The BOS Server does not shut itself down; it terminates safely when you turn off the machine. Include the -wait option to be sure that all processes have stopped before performing the next step.
$ bos shutdown -server machine -wait
The -wait option causes the command shell prompt to remain absent until the processes are stopped. If the -wait option is omitted, the prompt returns immediately, even if the processes are not yet stopped.
4. Log in as root in the native UNIX file system of the machine to be rebooted. For example:
$ su root
Password: root_password
5. Issue the appropriate reboot command (/etc/reboot or its equivalent) for the machine to be rebooted. For example:
# /etc/reboot