help with ignite boot from lan.

[someone_4]

Hello,
I am trying to boot an A180 server ( with no ineteral cd or tape drive, and I dont have an external one that I can use either ) that some has brought to me without /stand/vmunix. It wont boot up. So I am trying to so a cold install over the network with an ignite server. After I interupt the boot. And try to boot from the ignite server doing
bo lan.192.168.10.12 INSTALL
I have also tried
BO LAN.192.168.10.12 INSTALL

It aprears liek it is trying to connect to the ignite server but it just sits on
"Booting.... " It doent go anywhere. After a while it gives me "Failed to Initialize". Now my thought here is that it is booting off the internal nic card.Since I do an SEA and the hardware address of the NIC card is there. And that is the card that I have my cable connected to. So the issue is that it is not connecting to the ignite server.

My question here is how do I configure the NIC card that it is trying to boot though and give it an ip address so it can connect to the ignute server? I dont know where this server has been or any history so maybe that nic has another address tied to it.
All sugestions and ideas are welcome.

Thanks
Richard

[John Poff]

Hi Richard,

Is your system on the same subnet as your Ignite server? If not, you'll need to setup a boot helper on another system on that same subnet.

We ran into the same problem recently. I think we had to do a 'sea ipl' in order for the system to find the boot device from the Ignite server, and then we could do the 'bo lan.192...'.

JP

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Richard,

You should see your install server when you do "search lan install" at the boot admin prompt.

On the ignite server do

"instl_adm -d" and look at the server IP. Your client should be on the same subnet as of the ignite server. Otherwise, you will need to use a ignite-boot only server.

-Sri

[Ross Zubritski]

Richard,

Is the A box on the same subnet?

Regards.

RZ

[someone_4]

Hi everyone,
Yes they are on the same subnet. Well let me clear that up. The cable to the NIC that I am trying to boot from on server P2 8/0/20/0.0 has a cable that is going to the router on the same subnet that the ignite server is at. So if that is what you mean by the same subnet yes they are.Has this NIC every been configured to be on that network? NO it has never had an configured for any network. Since it was never used.

Here is more history that I found out about this server. The built in NIC card 8/0/20/0.0 was never used when the server was working. They used the other one that is labled HSC or PCI NIC Card. I have also found out that they did try to do an ignite install over a network on this server but it failed. And that the server has not come up since. Now what I think is that since they were using one of the other connections on the dual card. That when the server was rebooting during the install/rebuild that it didnt include the device drivers for that PCI NIC card. I remember I have done this to another A-Class and I had to install thoose drivers after the server was up and running. So since it didnt bring up the PCI Nic card the connection was lost and the install was not able to continue or finish. Am I thinking in the right logic here??

That might also explain why vminux is missing. So as of right now I have not been able to do anything.

thanks
Richard

[Ross Zubritski]

To the above point, what does "sea lan install" do from the BCH prompt?

Thanks

RZ

[someone_4]

I just had a thought here. Would anyone happend to know what the name of the file is that an ignite sever makes on a client? I am thinking if it was in the process of being installed from an ignite client maybe I can boot from that file. I think it may be called INSTALL something .. ???


Richard