Re: Changing the BIOS boot order in linux
On 21 Jul 2009, at 1:51 pm, Joel Merrick wrote: There might be a dirty way: Write a FAI script or a hook for the final part of the installation. This script changes the pxe configuration in such a way that the node does not boot locally but it boots a DOS image. This DOS image contains tools for setting the NVRAM and CMOS. Create a CMOS-image which has the right boot order. After the next reboot the nodes boots from a local disk. This is intriguing, I take it you can use this method for BOIS updates too (on hardware that it'll work with of course..) Yep, used to do that on RLX blade servers all the time circa 2002, since they had no removable media at all, and the only way the firmware could be updated was to PXE boot a DOS floppy. It was actually built into the RLX Control Tower software; its OS deployment method also used a PXE booted DOS boot floppy to SMB mount the Control Tower server's exported filesystems, which contained OS images which could be unpacked onto the disks of the machine. The process was fairly analogous to the way FAI works today, but much less customisable. SMB was used rather than NFS to make deploying Windows onto the blades easier (not that I heard of many RLX customers that were using Windows). Even though RLX is long since a defunct company, Control Tower still exists as a product, only now it's owned by HP and goes by the name of Insight Control Linux Edition, which some of you may have seen. It's had some fairly substantial rewriting since the days of Control Tower 3 on the original RLX blade products, though. Back to the question at hand, updating BIOS settings is frequently a hardware specific issue, and difficult to automate. It's one of the principal reasons why I'm a fan of blade server architectures. For example, on our HP c-Class blades, to PXE boot (and hence hand to FAI) a chassis of machines, I just log into the chassis onboard administrator using ssh, and then type: set server boot once pxe all reboot server all Obviously if I only want to do a subset of blades, I can change "all" to be whichever blades I want to reboot. Simple as that. No messing about with PXE boot floppies and all that nonsense. Tim -- The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is operated by Genome Research Limited, a charity registered in England with number 1021457 and a company registered in England with number 2742969, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.
Re: Changing the BIOS boot order in linux
> There might be a dirty way: > > Write a FAI script or a hook for the final part of the installation. > This script changes the pxe configuration in such a way that the node > does not boot locally but it boots a DOS image. > This DOS image contains tools for setting the NVRAM and CMOS. Create a > CMOS-image which has the right boot order. After the next reboot the > nodes boots from a local disk. This is intriguing, I take it you can use this method for BOIS updates too (on hardware that it'll work with of course..) -- $ echo "kpfmAdpoofdufevq/dp/vl" | perl -pe 's/(.)/chr(ord($1)-1)/ge'
Re: Changing the BIOS boot order in linux
Thanks for all the replies. I've kept the BIOS boot order constant (i.e. Network boot first) and changing the PXE config file to boot the network image for first time and hard disk for the second time. Regards, Sridhar. On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Henning Fehrmann < henning.fehrm...@aei.mpg.de> wrote: > Hello, > > >I'm working on a project to do automatic Cent OS installation. > >I've done all the things successfully except manual intervention in > BIOS > >boot order change. > >I'm using PXE boot server, DHCP, tftp, syslinux, kickstart > configuration > >for the OS installation. > >It seems in the Linux, it is NOT possible to change BIOS boot order in > >running LINUX box. > >How 'linux-fai' is doing this boot order change? > >I've read the FAI guide, section 7.10 "Changing the boot device", but > did > >NOT get the complete picture. > >Any pointers/suggestions etc on "how to boot from local hard disk > after > >the OS installation is done" would be greatly appreciated. > >Thanks in Advance, > > There might be a dirty way: > > Write a FAI script or a hook for the final part of the installation. > This script changes the pxe configuration in such a way that the node > does not boot locally but it boots a DOS image. > This DOS image contains tools for setting the NVRAM and CMOS. Create a > CMOS-image which has the right boot order. After the next reboot the > nodes boots from a local disk. > > This is FAI independent - you could use kickstart as well. > > Follow the lines of > http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/DosBoot > > Unfortunately, standard main boards vendors offer only DOS tools to set > the CMOS. > > Cheers, > Henning >
Re: Changing the BIOS boot order in linux
Hello, >I'm working on a project to do automatic Cent OS installation. >I've done all the things successfully except manual intervention in BIOS >boot order change. >I'm using PXE boot server, DHCP, tftp, syslinux, kickstart configuration >for the OS installation. >It seems in the Linux, it is NOT possible to change BIOS boot order in >running LINUX box. >How 'linux-fai' is doing this boot order change? >I've read the FAI guide, section 7.10 "Changing the boot device", but did >NOT get the complete picture. >Any pointers/suggestions etc on "how to boot from local hard disk after >the OS installation is done" would be greatly appreciated. >Thanks in Advance, There might be a dirty way: Write a FAI script or a hook for the final part of the installation. This script changes the pxe configuration in such a way that the node does not boot locally but it boots a DOS image. This DOS image contains tools for setting the NVRAM and CMOS. Create a CMOS-image which has the right boot order. After the next reboot the nodes boots from a local disk. This is FAI independent - you could use kickstart as well. Follow the lines of http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/DosBoot Unfortunately, standard main boards vendors offer only DOS tools to set the CMOS. Cheers, Henning
Re: Changing the BIOS boot order in linux
> On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:29:34 +0530, Sridhar Kumar Kotturu > said: > It seems in the Linux, it is NOT possible to change BIOS boot order in > running LINUX box. AFAIK it's not possible. There may be some hacks, but these don't work on all machines. In FAI, the machines always boot from network via PXE (so no changes in the BIOS) and get different configs that told them to do the installation or to boot from local disk after the installation finished. -- regards Thomas
Changing the BIOS boot order in linux
Hello, I'm working on a project to do automatic Cent OS installation. I've done all the things successfully except manual intervention in BIOS boot order change. I'm using PXE boot server, DHCP, tftp, syslinux, kickstart configuration for the OS installation. It seems in the Linux, it is NOT possible to change BIOS boot order in running LINUX box. How 'linux-fai' is doing this boot order change? I've read the FAI guide, section 7.10 "Changing the boot device", but did NOT get the complete picture. Any pointers/suggestions etc on "how to boot from local hard disk after the OS installation is done" would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in Advance, Sridhar Kotturu.
