Adding modules to FAI initrd
Hi all, I have a question, or perhaps even a feature request, concerning adding modules to the initrd that FAI builds for PXE booting, and subsequently for client installation. My clients have Broadcom NetExtreme NICs that are PXE-enabled. Unfortunately, the standard initrd that comes out of the Ubuntu (and Debian, AFAIK) repositories does not contain the bnx2 and bnx2e drivers required. Therefore, these must be added to the initrd. The way I currently get round the issue is to install the appropriate kernel package onto my server machine, edit the /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file, and do a mkinitramfs. I then replace the FAI-built initrd with my custom one. This seems to work, but is far from an elegant solution. I wonder if it is possible to instruct FAI to build the initrd with the required modules (and, of course, add the modules to $NFSROOT/etc/initramfs-tools/modules as well)? Cheers, Chris -- Dr Chris Jewell Department of Statistics University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL UK Tel: +44 (0)24 7615 0778
Re: Adding modules to FAI initrd
Hi Chris, On Tuesday, September 28, 2010 12:06:16 pm Chris Jewell wrote: Hi all, I have a question, or perhaps even a feature request, concerning adding modules to the initrd that FAI builds for PXE booting, and subsequently for client installation. My clients have Broadcom NetExtreme NICs that are PXE-enabled. Unfortunately, the standard initrd that comes out of the Ubuntu (and Debian, AFAIK) repositories does not contain the bnx2 and bnx2e drivers required. Therefore, these must be added to the initrd. The way I currently get round the issue is to install the appropriate kernel package onto my server machine, edit the /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file, and do a mkinitramfs. I then replace the FAI-built initrd with my custom one. This seems to work, but is far from an elegant solution. I wonder if it is possible to instruct FAI to build the initrd with the required modules (and, of course, add the modules to $NFSROOT/etc/initramfs-tools/modules as well)? Actually they do. But as the initrd (better to say the initramfs) is created inside the chroot, you won't be able to detect those. Therefore you need to do the following: chroot into your nfsroot edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules add bnx2 and bnx2e drivers to it. make sure that inside your nfsroot the packages (for ubuntu): linux-firmware linux-firmware-nonfree are installed. For Debian you need to install the package versions of the non-free firmware stuff (sorry, I don't have the name right now) After that, regenerate initramfs-tools inside your chroot with update-initramfs -k all -u and copy the resulting initrd from nfs-chroot/boot/initrd-kernelversion.gz to your tftpd directory Regards, \sh -- OSS Developer / Ubuntu Developer SysAdmin JID: s...@sourcecode.de http://shermann.name/
Re: Installing Debian Squeeze (i386) - No $HOSTNAME set
Hallo Michael, Am 25.09.2010 17:53, schrieb Michael Tautschnig: It would be fantastic if you could provide the full logs of your installation, it seems that not too many people have used FAI on full squeeze systems before. We definitely need to resolve these issues before the release. here is a list of problems/annoyances during installation of Debian Squeeze with fai 3.4.2: 1. Use uppercase hostname/ip parameters in boot command line. Change to uppercase in /srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg/* or /etc/fai/grub.cfg APPEND boot=live FAI_FLAGS=verbose,createvt FAI_ACTION=install IP=192.168.148.100:eth0:off HOSTNAME=gnomehost root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=192.168.148.11:/srv/fai/nfsroot 2. ftp-logserver does not default to install server. Need to set Logserver explicitly in file /etc/fai/fai.conf. # Name of log-server. If undefined, the install server will be used. LOGSERVER=faiserver 3. ssh-command for fai-chboot (Calling task_chboot) requires user input. The authenticity of host 'faiserver (192.168.148.11)' can't be established. RSA key fingerprint is ... Are you sure you want to continue connection (yes/no)? Solution is to append the line StrictHostKeyChecking no to /etc/ssh/ssh_config (for nfsroot). 4. Some packages missing in squeeze fai.log:No candidate version found for iceweasel-gnome-support fai.log:No candidate version found for icedove-gnome-support fai.log:No candidate version found for gnome-apt These packages are not available for debian squeeze. 5. Error when running fai-setup df: Warning: cannot read table of mounted file systems: No such file or directory No /etc/mtab inside nfsroot. Solution is to add a softlink: ln -sf /proc/mounts /etc/mtab 6. Error when running fai-setup Creating config file /etc/default/grub with new version grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for / (is /dev mounted?). grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot (is /dev mounted?). grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?). No idea on this errors. Can't detect any problems caused by this. 7. Error messages on modules.dep missing (but file exists!) fai.log:FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-486/modules.dep: No such file or directory fai.log:FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-486/modules.dep: No such file or directory fai.log:FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-486/modules.dep: No such file or directory Reason was 5. 8. Final reboot (task_faiend) produces some messages (Messages only visible for a moment). Messages like: Unmounting ..., Failed to unmount ..., Remount read only. But everything works find after it. Regards, Karl
preserving dos partitions
Hello, i have configured my /srv/fai/config/disk_config/FAIBASE so that after installation the Windows partition is preserved. I am sure that the Windows partition is preserved because during installation, setup_harddisks told me that the /dev/sda1 driver was going to be preserved. Also, i have added the GRUB class to my host. After installation, i didn't see Windows in the OS choice menu. There are only Ubuntu in the menu of choice of Operating Systems. What have i forgotten to do?
Re: preserving dos partitions
mamadou diop a écrit : Hello, i have configured my /srv/fai/config/disk_config/FAIBASE so that after installation the Windows partition is preserved. I am sure that the Windows partition is preserved because during installation, setup_harddisks told me that the /dev/sda1 driver was going to be preserved. Also, i have added the GRUB class to my host. After installation, i didn't see Windows in the OS choice menu. There are only Ubuntu in the menu of choice of Operating Systems. What have i forgotten to do? man grub? When using grub legacy, you need to add a few lines at the end of /boot/grub/menu.lst, like the following: title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 boot If you use grub-pc, just install os-prober, and run update-grub, Windows should show up. -- Nicolas
Re: preserving dos partitions
Thank you Nicolas, that has worked but it would be good to configure that in the server. 2010/9/28 Nicolas Courtel cour...@cena.fr mamadou diop a écrit : Hello, i have configured my /srv/fai/config/disk_config/FAIBASE so that after installation the Windows partition is preserved. I am sure that the Windows partition is preserved because during installation, setup_harddisks told me that the /dev/sda1 driver was going to be preserved. Also, i have added the GRUB class to my host. After installation, i didn't see Windows in the OS choice menu. There are only Ubuntu in the menu of choice of Operating Systems. What have i forgotten to do? man grub? When using grub legacy, you need to add a few lines at the end of /boot/grub/menu.lst, like the following: title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 boot If you use grub-pc, just install os-prober, and run update-grub, Windows should show up. -- Nicolas
Re: preserving dos partitions
Thank you Nicolas, that has worked but it would be good to configure that in the server. (keeping Nicolas' email for reference below) This simply means that you should configure that in /srv/fai/config/files/boot/grub/menu.lst/ Hope this helps, Michael 2010/9/28 Nicolas Courtel cour...@cena.fr mamadou diop a écrit : Hello, i have configured my /srv/fai/config/disk_config/FAIBASE so that after installation the Windows partition is preserved. I am sure that the Windows partition is preserved because during installation, setup_harddisks told me that the /dev/sda1 driver was going to be preserved. Also, i have added the GRUB class to my host. After installation, i didn't see Windows in the OS choice menu. There are only Ubuntu in the menu of choice of Operating Systems. What have i forgotten to do? man grub? When using grub legacy, you need to add a few lines at the end of /boot/grub/menu.lst, like the following: title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 boot If you use grub-pc, just install os-prober, and run update-grub, Windows should show up. -- Nicolas pgput88FOa5w1.pgp Description: PGP signature
