PXE Boot Image from an ISO

[Dan_346]

Is it possible to make a PXE Boot Image from an ISO? If so, how?

What I'm thinking about doing is taking the firmware_maintenance-7.40-b.iso from HP and making that a PXE boot image so I can select that when PXE booting and do firmware updates.

Is there a better or alternative method?

Thanks!
Dan

[Gopi Sekar]

I am not sure, but I believe you can do this in the RDP console using Boot disk creater which allows the user to have his own customized OS which can be booted through PXE.

Otherwise there are freeware PXE servers available on the net (especially on the opensource), it is pretty easy and straight forward to configure them. Use it to provide firmware images through PXE, remember you also need to have DHCP server.

Hope this helps,
Gopi

[Ed Cox]

Dan,
The PXE enabled NIC takes the PXE boot image and loads it into RAM like a normal diskette boot method. The firmware iso from hp's website is pretty gi-normous in size...so an alternative is to download the .iso and point the iLO virtual media to the .iso as its' boot device. I have booted the iLO to bootable .img and .iso files before, so it works, but I have never created a PXE boot file from an .iso file. In the Altiris boot disk creator, it uses your choice of WinPE, Linux or DOS boot files but I have never seen a way to point to an .iso as the source for the boot files. It could just be that I am living a sheltered existence and the method does indeed exist. If you would like the steps on how to do the iLO virtual media boot ...just let me know.
Good luck,
Ed

[Steven Clementi]

Yes, it is not likely that the boot rom can hold an image of that size.

It might be more logical to look at the ilo scripting support to do what you need. Virtual media would definitely work to boot off of since the size does not matter.


Steven

[Saltend]

Dan,

Did you have any joy with this? I've successfully made RIS download the ISO, but then it error's after that due to ris/startrom.com expecting a txtsetup.txt file in the image which naturally the firmware CD doesn't have.

[john mills_3]

Chaps - apparently iso image bootable cd's are
only for BL series servers (Straight from
HP !!!!).
I tried to get one working on a DL and it fails
at the bootworks loading point with "unable
to detect network protocols" .....

[CamScott]

Hi Dan,
Yes it is possible. I've done it before with the 7.30 version. It suits our needs as it is a centrally managed firmware update server, but it does have some issues updating some newer products.

Using the ISO is probably not the preferred method, as it contains alot of *stuff* that isn't really required and would be alot harder to modify.

The HP Drive Key Boot Utility would better suit your needs. http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/23839.html
But it also requires a bit of linux know-how to modify it in order for it to work.
You will need: a linux box that has a dhcp server, tftp, and pxelinux.

The main file you need to modify is initrd.img.

The basic jist is:
- unzip the initrd.img file (it's a gzipped archive)
- mount the initrd.img file to the loop device
- create a bigger initrd.img file
- copy the contents of the old initrd.img file to the new initrd.img file
- modify all references (many scripts to trace through) to the usb device (the original initrd.img file thinks it's on a usb key) using symbolic links, etc to point within the image file.
- copy all the firmware updates to the new, bigger initrd.img file.

The main problem I found is that the whole new rezipped initrd.img file must be about 90MB. Which is pretty big considering that unzipped its alot more.

If your not sure about anything I've said, I'll see if I can help. I'm currently working to get the 7.50 SmartStart version working. This is not my main job, just a hobby at the moment.

Do you update the firmware on alot of servers?

[CamScott]

Hello all,

If anyone is still interested, I've successfully modified the SmartStart 7.50 Firmware Update CD into a PXE bootable image file.

Reply to this thread or email me if you would like further details.

Cheers,
Cam

[Saltend]

I'm very interested if you could post/send info.

[CamScott]

I'll post a reply later with attachments for the steps I've taken, plus some basic bash shell scripts to make the process a bit easier.

Note: There is no longer a 90M limit on the final image file size. My tftpd server (atftpd) was the cause of this limit. After changing to tftpd-hpa I guess the limit is the amount of RAM in the target machine.

The instructions will assume a linux box is being used as the PXE server. I don't see why, after creating the image file, it wouldn't work on other types of pxe servers.

[Saltend]

I have pxelinux working via RIS so it should be fine on that.

[CamScott]

Hi Saltend,

Sorry for the tardy response, but I've been busy with work and underestimated how long the instructions would take to write.

I've attached the instructions in a text file. I've tried to make them as easily readable as possible. It will take very little modification to turn the instructions into a script for Linux.

Hopefully someone can make a HOWTO out of them.

Cheers,
Cam.

[Saltend]

No problem. I shall let know know how I get on.

[Hannesdance]

Hi CamScott,

I'm also interested in your bootable iso.
Can you send me an e-mail, how to do?

[Arco van Geest]

Did anybody try to use a NFS root?

[CamScott]

Hi Hannesdance,

My post on Jun 16 has an attachment with the how-to.

[Hannesdance]

Oh, sorry,
this type of Board is not that familiar to me.

[Arco van Geest]

After some fiddling I managed to create the ramdisk without the need of editting file by hand.

Put the attached script in
Also the extra directory is included in the image.

I myself had problems when the ramdisk size is beyond 300MB.

[Arco van Geest]

hmm. after the first reply failed I submitted too quick.

Place the iso and this script in a directory with enough space. the OUTPUTDIR in the script points to the tftp directory.

[Reggie Washington]

I was able to PXE boot the Firmware Maintenance CD using CamScott's instructions (thanks). But I work for a company that builds a lot of servers, and I need the swpackages directory to be a large repository of firmware. So I would like to keep my swpackages directory on my server and create a link in the compaq directory. This would probably need to be done using nfs. But from what I can see the CD has no networking support. Anyone have any ideas on how to make this work? Any insight would be helpful. Thanks.

[CamScott]

Hi Reggie,
I was going to attempt doing what you require, but it was going to take too long as a side project for me.
In order to do it though I believe you will need to obtain the same version of linux, at least the kernel version, that was used to build the firmware cd and recompile a kernel with support for the NIC and NFS.
It's been a while since I've had a look at it though.

[Reggie Washington]

Thanks for the reply. You wouldn't happen to know which file looks to the swpackage directory to begin the firmware update process would you? If I could find that file, I might be onto something. I have the networking part setup.

[misteros2]

can u send me the mentioned howto?

[CamScott]

Hi misteros2,

I've just appended the howto to work with the latest Smartstart Firmware CD v7.61 and have attached it with a few scripts in .rar format.

Let me know if there are any issues.

Cheers,
Cam

[CamScott]

Hi Reggie,

Using the SS7.61 firmware update CD, I've been able to get the NFS functionality you were looking for working.

All thats required is to add 2 more kernel options to the append line in the PXE configuration file. These options are nfsroot= and ssiso=. nfsroot should be the location of the NFS server and directory that contains the files required for SS i.e. 'nfsroot=10.0.0.1:/SS761'. ssiso is the name of the file that has been updated with the firmware files. It is meant to point to the original SS7.61 iso, but pointing it to the sda1 file created in my scripts works. i.e. 'ssiso=sda1'.

Just copy the file sda1 to /SS761.

All that's then required is setting up the NFS server and exporting the directory containing the SS7.61 firmware file sda1.

The file /root/compaq/cdrom.sh in the intrd.img file contains the info regarding NFS.

Let me know how you go.