Utilities
UEFI
UEFI is an OS and platform-independent boot and preboot interface. UEFI resides between the OS and
platform firmware, allowing the OS to boot without having details about the underlying hardware and
firmware. UEFI supports boot devices, uses a flat memory model, and hides platform and firmware details
from the OS.
NOTE:
Unified EFI Forum, Inc. defines the specification used to implement UEFI. POSSE is a Hewlett
Packard Enterprise extension to UEFI, which provides a common user interface architecture to
better serve Hewlett Packard Enterprise customers, service, and manufacturing.
UEFI allows the selection of any UEFI OS loader from any boot medium that is supported by UEFI boot
services. A UEFI OS loader supports multiple options on the user interface.
UEFI supports booting from media that contain a UEFI OS loader or a UEFI-defined system partition. A
UEFI-defined system partition is required by UEFI to boot from a block device.
The UEFI boot manager loads UEFI applications (including the OS first-stage loader) and UEFI drivers
from a UEFI-defined file system or image loading service. NVRAM variables point to the file to be loaded.
These variables contain application-specific data that is passed directly to the UEFI application. UEFI
variables provide system firmware a boot menu that points to all the OSs, even multiple versions of the
same OSs.
The UEFI System Utilities allows you to control the server's booting environment. Depending on how boot
options are configured after the server is powered up, the Boot Manager presents you with different boot
options to select. For example, you can boot to the UEFI Shell, or to an OS located on the network or
residing on media in the server. The Device Manager presents devices to configure. The Boot
Maintenance Manager presents menus to configure different settings. See
Boot Maintenance Manager
on page 106 for more information.
UEFI Shell and POSSE commands
For more information about these commands, enter
help
or
help
<command>
at the UEFI Shell
prompt.
Table 16: UEFI Shell commands
UEFI Shell command
Definition
?
Displays the UEFI Shell command list or verbose command help
alias
Displays, creates, or deletes UEFI Shell aliases
attrib
Displays or changes the attributes of files or directories
autoboot
Sets or displays autoboot timeout and retries
bcfg
Displays or modifies the driver/boot configuration
boottest
Turns specific speedyboot bits on or off
Table Continued
102
Utilities