PXE Boot Image from an ISO

[shocko]

From what i have read heer, supermount.sh controls mounting the USB stick. It mounts it to $bootdeviceMP.

We tell the supermount.sh script that we are botting from USB by passing media=USB as an append option to our kernel.

Now, the section, that mounts the USB stick reads:

"mount -t vfat ${device} $BOOTDEVICEMP >> $log_file 2>> $log_file "

which looks like it just mounts the USB to /mnt/bootdevice.

What i'm wondering is can i mount USB/8.20/ instead so that any scripts in the initrd.img that reference /mnt/bootdevice dont have to be altered?

[Arco van Geest]

I started to use the systemrescuecd to install firmware. The rate of new versions is too high for me to follow and the image does remind me of italian food 8-)

The problem I have now is the hpilo2 driver and the standard systemrescuecd kernel.

It is possible to inject bootscripts for every new release but it's not worth the effort imo.

[Bill Streeter]

Has anyone had luck with Firmware version 8.5?

I seem to be having the same issues with Firmware 8.50 as I was having with SmartStart 8.20

[Søren Laursen]

Tried all the different methods. Only 8.3 worked.

Got a bash shell when i tried 8.5 and also 8.4 if I remember correct.

Do understand why HP do not support it out of the "box".

Most of the time I have a down time about 1 hour pr. blade when updating firmware etc. pr. blade.

Regards,

Søren

[Bill Streeter]

I did get 8.50 (and smartstart 8.20) to work.

To do this:
I copied the initrd.img file from the 8.40 and 8.50, rename to initrd.img.gz, extract, mount, ect. (google for rebuilding an initrd.img file)

diff the cdrom.sh from 8.4 and the cdrom.sh from 8.5. 'patch' the 8.5 cdrom.sh with the diff file and rebuild the initrd.img including the patched cdrom.sh

Of course, this requires some *nix knowledge and a machine running *nix (or least a live cd).

I'd write a script to do this, but the scripting is a bit above my head for now.

[Peter Capriccio]

I did something similar (see my April 7th post in this thread) where I used the "cdrom.sh" from SmartStart v8.15 with SmartStart v8.20. With Firmware v8.50 I used the same file, but I noticed something strange -- along with the NFS mount of the export directory and the loopback mount of the ISO, there was another NFS mount of the ISO file itself on a mount point of the same name.

After poking around for a while, I found the change that "broke" the prior method we have been using. Originally, I had thought that they took out the magic bits from "cdrom.sh" because putting them back in seemed to fix the problem, but what they really did was to move (and modify) them to "supermount.sh". The same functionality is there, but there is an extra kernel commandline parameter they check for:
.
.
for ((i=1; i<$MAX_LOOPDEV; i++))
{
eval iso=\$iso${i}
eval isoopts=\$iso${i}opts
eval isomnt=\$iso${i}mnt # <--- NEW in Firmware v8.50 (and SmartStart v8.20)
.
.
# mount the iso
local_path=`$HOME/mount_url.sh "${iso}" "${isoopts}"`
if [ -n "$local_path" ] ; then
if [ -n "$isomnt" ] ; then # <----- drop through if not defined
.
.

So, to fix this (meaning you don't have to muck with the "initrd.img"), you just need to add a mount point specification to go along with the ISO file specification on the commandline (being sure to enumerate them the same -- "iso1" needs an "iso1mnt") -- for example, here are my PXELINUX entries for Firmware v8.50 and SmartStart v8.20:

label firmware-0850
MENU LABEL ProLiant Firmware v8.50
kernel FW-0850/vmlinuz
append initrd=FW-0850/initrd.img media=network rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=150052 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off vga=788 splash=silent showopts iso1=nfs://192.168.1.254/FW-0850/FW850.2009_0507.71.iso iso1mnt=/mnt/bootdevice

label smartstart-0820x32
MENU LABEL SmartStart v8.20 (32-bit)
kernel SS-0820/vmlinuz
append initrd=SS-0820/initrd.img media=network rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=115220 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off vga=788 splash=silent showopts iso1=nfs://192.168.1.254/SS-0820/SS820.2009_0213.81-x86.iso iso1mnt=/mnt/bootdevice

From what I can tell in "supermount.sh", the "isomnt" mountpoint can be any valid directory spec -- there is a "create backward compatibility links" check in there to see if it is defined as "/mnt/bootdevice", so I just stuck with that.

[Bill Streeter]

Thanks for digging that up Peter!

Why doesn't HP document this anywhere? Or is it documented and none of us know where to find it? That little piece of info would have saved a couple hours of my time...

[Søren Laursen]

Tried the new method no luck. Just a blue screen and a mouse arrow.

Did something else, mixed 840 boot and a 850 iso and was able to boot and update some of the drivers.

Not iLO however, no driver.

Talked to HP support and have asked them to support PXE, but they just want me to use they own tools.

Søren

[Peter Capriccio]

@Bill -- I have not found this stuff documented anywhere -- as Søren pointed out, I think HP wants you to use their own tools (like HPSUM?) for rolling out updates and inventory management, etc -- perhaps this is fine for the enterprise, but I think they completely miss the needs of the small to medium business customers -- there's a huge gap between the folks who can get away with a CD or USB stick for a couple of servers and those that can afford a management app, IMHO...

@Søren -- my experience has been that if you are getting "Just a blue screen and a mouse arrow" then the CD contents are not getting mounted -- while in that state, you can usually "Ctrl-Alt-F1" back to the console window and issue a "mount" command from the Bash shell as a starting point to see what is going on.

[Søren Laursen]

Hi,

It dies because et does not mount the iso in /mnt/bootdevice

It complains about missing xserver directory in the X11R6 directories.

It is HPSUM that HP told me to use, but with only 4 blades at the momemnt it is bit of an overkill. The HP support was great they fixed my problemes with directions to firmware etc., so no complains there.

But it would be nice with PXE support out-of-the-box.

Well, I will continue to hut the errors.

Regards,

Soeren

[Bill Streeter]

Thankfully, version 8.6 seems to work the same as 8.5 did! :)

My pxe linux configuration entry: (with extra enters for clarity)

LABEL Firmware-860
Menu Label Firmware Maintenance CD 8.^60
kernel FM0860/vmlinuz
append initrd=FM0860/initrd.img
media=network
rw
root=/dev/ram0
ramdisk_size=164212
init=/bin/init
loglevel=3
ide=nodma
ide=noraid
pnpbios=off
vga=788
showopts
iso1=nfs://192.168.0.44/mnt/Network_Boot/FW860.2009_0803.38.iso iso1mnt=/mnt/bootdevice

[Anthony Dyson]

Bill Streeter's post on Aug 13 2009.

This works for me, but one question. How are you calculating the appropriate ram-disk size?

[ElectroPhil]

Bill,

I noticed that your using a private IP (192.168.0.44) for mounting the iso.
iso1=nfs://192.168.0.44/mnt/Network_Boot/FW860.2009_0803.38.iso

I'd like to use a private IP for my nfs share as well. My host has an addy in dns which I don't want to use. So how can I assign the host two different addresses?

Edit /etc/hosts with:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.44 localhost localhost

I'm not even sure if that is correct. Basically, on the iso1= line, i don't want to put the DNS IP, i want to put a private one. What files need to be edited/added?

I tried using "localhost" and "127.0.0.1 ", but that does not work.

Also, I was able to boot the Firmware 8.50 CD using nfs method, but the 8.60 CD gets stuck at a blue screen and mouse cursor. I added the "iso1mnt=/mnt/bootdevice". Any ideas?

[Bill Streeter]

Anthony...I'm not calculating the proper RAMDisk size. I just copy it from the isolinux.cfg file on the CD. The number usually changes from release to release.

Phil...I'm not really sure cause I don't get what you're going for. The private IP is the only way I know to point the client to the appropriate nfs server.

With the blue screen with cursor...CTL+ALT+F1 and see if the iso image actually mounted. I was having permissions issues on my nfs server (SLED 11) and after changing the permissions on the iso and the share, the client was finally able to mount the iso and everything continues as it should have.

[Martin Hunderup]

Have anyone tried booting FW 8.60 using MS WDS and pxelinux?

I have come so far as getting the blue screen, but it does not seem to load the iso from the ms nfs server.

[Martin Hunderup]

Finally got it working, had to do with permissions to the nfs share.

Now my next question is, if its possible to boot it over nfs without using iso image over changing files in initrd.img?

maybe a kernel command like iso1?

[dysonapr]

Bill,

Best way is probably to use a 2nd NIC for the non-routable network.

[shocko]

I see the release of USB Key utility 1.20 takes advantage of the new format of the smartstart/firmware .isos

The HP enginners have obviously been listening in on the forums as now you can have mulitple versions of smartstart from 8.3-0 onwars and Firmware CD from 8.70 (not released yet) on the same USB!

With a bit file copying you can put 1 (but only one:( ) version lower than 8.30 on alos and edit you .cfg file.

Cool.

[Forhad_1]

Martin Hunderup can you tell me how did get the new firmware 8.60 working ?

Thanks

[Oliver Hookins]

Hi, I've been trying to get the firmware image 8.60 booted successfully over PXE. Initially I tried as a large initrd and had no success. I've been trying today over NFS but I've been having problems.

On the text terminal I've been getting those libX11 linking problems as mentioned earlier in the thread but there was no solution posted. The blade that is accessing the PXE system seems to continually access the NFS share for hours after booting but I can't see any progress.

From what I can tell in previous posts, there shouldn't need to be any changes to the image in order for 8.60 to be usable over NFS aside from using the "media=network" option and setting the iso1 and iso1mnt options.

Any hints would be appreciated.

[Peter Capriccio]

Oliver,

The link error messages could indicate a problem trying to mount the "/usr" file system from the ISO image. From the text terminal, can you issue the following commands and post the results here?:

mount
cat /proc/cmdline

Thanks,

Pete C.

[Oliver Hookins]

Hi, I took a look inside the initrd and saw the stuff to do with mounting /usr but it isn't clear as to why it would fail in the default configuration. Unfortunately I can't seem to get a shell after it fails. The last line mentions a failed test due to an empty variable which I think happens when it tries to set the date correctly, then things grind to a halt.

I can Ctrl-C it at that point but that ends the last process in that runlevel and I can't do anything anyway.

[Peter Capriccio]

Do you get the "splash" screen (see attached) before you see a "text" screen? My experience has been that first I see the "splash" screen (with the progress bar and the "step n of 4" status) on the primary console and then then "X" and the window manager start up on virtual terminal/console 2 (Ctrl+Alt+F2). Can you get "back" to the "splash" screen and execute a command shell via Ctrl+Alt+F1 (and then just enter a carriage return)?

[Oliver Hookins]

Looks like we had some odd network issues causing retransmissions of the NFS packets, and now that we have sorted out the networking it is working fine.

Very little to do to get the FW 8.60 and SS 8.30 CDs to work by PXE and NFS!

[Forhad_1]

Hi Oliver Hookins can you please post your process how you did it to get this working?

Thanks
Forhad