PXE Boot Image from an ISO

[vancec]

To add new updates to the Firmware package you just need to copy the *.scexe files to the appropriate subdir, /export/FW900.2010_0403.93/hp/swpackages/ in my case. This works for USB made keys too.

You also need to made sure the scexe is executable. "sudo chmod a+rx CP012402.scexe"

I have had intermittent issues with smartstart, it gets into the X system and just sits there with an active cursor. only happens to some systems. We only use DL360 G6 and G5s, very annoying when you need run this for HP serveice and it won't start.

[vancec]

Oh, here are some musings that may be of interest in the Firmware update arena.

fyi, we only have DL360 G6/G6's and use centos.

We used to only update by mounting the FW dir on our working OS (no apps running) and just execute hpsum with appropriate options.

This led to about 30 percent of the G5's having some sort of update issues. Sometimes doing it again worked, sometimes not (bricked P800 and PM modules).

VAR tech said he never has any issues with USB key or CD. So, from then on we only used FW update from PXE on the G5s and it's been great. So, if you have G5 and older I would only use USB Key/PXE based updater.

On G6s I still mount and run hpsum from OS. My script does a "tail -n 5 /var/hp/log/*.log" on all the systems so i can see if anything is amiss. ILO will sometimes fail to update. I just run it manually on those, always works.

Options I run on hpsum:
"./hpsum /silent /allow_update_to_bundle /allow_non_bundle_components /use_latest /use_downloaded"

I used to also have "/use_web", but it downloaded ILO v2.00 and that kernel panicked 60 machines on reboot. That was a very long day....

vance

[Barney Jones]

Vanec wrote:

To add new updates to the Firmware package you just need to copy the *.scexe files to the appropriate subdir, /export/FW900.2010_0403.93/hp/swpackages/ in my case. This works for USB made keys too.


@Vanec, I tried copying the .scexe files into the unpacked iso image and then re-burning the iso, but for some reason it doesn't pick up the latest firmware updates. Does anyone know why this might be happening?

[Barney Jones]

In follow up to my last message about adding .scexe files to an ISO image, it has become apparent that there may be a bug which doesn't pick up the latest .scexe files if you drop them into the swpackages directory of an unpacked ISO and then re-pack it. I am waiting to hear back from HP if this is a bug or not. They have provided me a workaround, which I haven't tested yet, but I'd like to know if it is a bug before implementing a workaround.

[Levente Lajko]

Hi Vance,

Have you managed to locate the update logs? My plan is to copy them to the nfs mount.

Levente

[AntsInPants]

Now with the Service Pack for Proliants, I would love to run this off a PXE server. I followed to the instructions, but it is now failing when it tries to mount the ISO image.

here is my pxelinux.cfg

label sos
  MENU LABEL HP Automatic Firmware Update Version 2011.09.0
  kernel hp/vmlinuz
  append initrd=hp/initrd.img media=cdrom rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=485956 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid nopat pnpbios=off vga=791 splash=silent hp_fibre showopts noexec32=off numa=off nox2apic TYPE=AUTOMATIC iso1=nfs://10.10.10.10/vol/firmware_iso/hp/SPP2011090.2011_0930.13.iso isolmnt=/mnt/bootdevice/

but it fails to an error saying "nfs://10.10.10.10/vol/firmware_iso/hp/SPP2011090.2011_0930.13.iso" is not a directory. 

Any help appreciated

[PavelS]

Is there a way to run automatically the hardware test provided by SmartStart 8.7b insight diagnostics? I have set the SmartStart at my PXE server. I need it only for the hardware tests (new servers are checked for failures during shipment). I have configured PXE to update the firmware and install os automatically but I need to add hardware check.

Also is there any way to do it with HP Insight Diagnostics Offline Edition... couldn't make it work with PXE.

Thanks in advance,

Pavel 

[shocko]

I am getting the same issue when trying to PXE boot the SPP. Here is my .cfg file

label SPP2012.01.0/
 MENU LABEL ^ - HP Service Support Pack 2012.01.0 - Manual Installation
 MENU INDENT 1
 kernel /HP/SSP/2012.01.0/vmlinuz
 append initrd=HP/SSP/2012.01.0/initrd.img media=network rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=485956 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid nopat pnpbios=off vga=791 splash=silent hp_fibre showopts noexec32=off numa=off nox2apic TYPE=MANUAL iso1=nfs://10.112.64.190/PXEROOT/NFSROOT/hpservicepack/SPP2012010.2012_0119.47.iso isolmnt=/mnt/bootdevice/
 say "Loading the HP Service Support Pack "

I get this error:

[Dave73]

Its looking for flat files not an iso.

I have implemented the spp to run after the installation of the o/s on our servers as it then also updates drivers and hp agents.

[shocko]

When you say 'flat files' what exactly do you mean? Do i need to change the kernel append params or do I need to exctract the .iso or both ?

[Dave73]

From the message you are recieving above, extract the files from the iso and it should work.

[shocko]

Hi Dave73,

I'm not sure that makes any sense. In previous versions of the SmartStart/Firmware DVDs you specify the path to the .iso on an NFS share (or otherwise) and it gets mounted so it's contents appear as a directory to the kernel. If I extract the files, I need to mount the extracted folder and not the ,iso no?

[Dave73]

I fell out the bus on this one :(

Ignore previous statemments, lol. Busy testing at the moment.

[Jack Alexander]

I'm doing the same thing, but according the docus for doing this, you want media=cdrom, not media=network.

FWIW: You have a few other switches in there that don't match the docs.  Here is what I am using successfully:

LABEL FW 9.0 (x86_64) Automatic Update

       MENU LABEL FW 9.0 (x86_64) Automatic Update

       KERNEL fw/9.0/x86_64/server/vmlinuz

       APPEND vmlinuz initrd=fw/9.0/x86_64/server/initrd.img media=cdrom rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk=25714 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off vga=791 splash=silent showopts TYPE=AUTOMATIC iso1=nfs://10.10.0.100/software/iso/fw/9.0/x86_64/server/FW900.2010_0403.93.iso iso1mnt=/mnt/bootdevice

[shocko]

Hi Jack,

I must eb in idito mode because I cannot find the documentation for this :))! I basically cobbled my append line together from old docs for the 9.x firmware! Can you post a link to that documentation please?

[shocko]

Thanks Jack,

I'll test again with your append line and see how it goes.

[James Ayvaz]

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1572577490/v68421/FWUsersGuide9.30.pdf

(Starts on page #16 )

[shocko]

That refers to the FW maintenance DVD v9.30. I wish to PXE boot the HP SPP [Janurary Release] directly. Are there any instructions for this?

[shocko]

APlogies, I should have read the guide. It does appear to have the setup config. I will test it now.

[shocko]

Still the same issue. Here is my PXE config

 MENU LABEL ^ Manual Installation
 MENU INDENT 2
 kernel /HP/SSP/2012.01.0/vmlinuz
 append initrd=HP/SSP/2012.01.0/initrd.img media=cdrom rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=257144 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off vga=791 splash=silent showopts TYPE=MANUAL iso1=nfs://<myserverai[>/PXEROOT/NFSROOT/hpservicepack/SPP2012010.2012_0119.47.iso isolmnt=/mnt/bootdevice
 say "Loading the HP Service Support Pack - Manual Installation"

And the error on load:

[shocko]

Hmm, it appears to me like it wants to mount a directory and not a .iso (unlike previous releases)

This may possibly be the case to allow for easy addition of newer Smart Components to the repository? Has anyone successful PXE booted the SPP form Janurary? Can you post your config?

[schlett]

I mounted the  iso on the  nfs server :

mount -o loop /mnt/iso /tmp/firmware.iso

and  copied all  files into a directory in my nfsroot :

cd  /mnt/iso ; rsync  -avr * /NFSROOT/firmware

and  than put this directory name as the iso1 parameter: iso1=nfs://ip/NFSROOT/firmware

[shocko]

Ok,

Its hair pulling out time! I simply cannot get this to work. It is mounting the directory from NFS no problem but nothing else is happening. First I get this message:

Yet I can see that the NFS mount succeeded

My cfg is as follows:

label SPP2012.02.0002
 MENU LABEL ^ Automatic Installation
 MENU INDENT 2
 kernel /HP/SSP/2012.02.0/vmlinuz
 append initrd=HP/SSP/2012.02.0/initrd.img media=cdrom rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=257144 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off vga=791 splash=silent showopts TYPE=AUTOMATIC iso1=nfs://<serverIP>/PXEROOT/NFSROOT/hpservicepack/SPP2012020.2012_0302.51/ isolmnt=/mnt/bootdevice
 say "Loading the HP Service Support Pack - Automatic Installation"

[ovikp]

I've read this thread from beginning to end as I wanted to get the SPP image working with PXE and my thanks goes out to all of you for your time and for sharing your experiences on this process.. I've managed to get it working once I've made the required changes to the intrd.img file (remove the ipv4ll dhcpcd option and prevent the netconfig.sh script from being ovewritten) and then copied all the contents of the SPP /system directory and the modified inird file to the tftp folder used by pxe. 

The PXE config I use is as follows:

      LINUX vmlinuz


       APPEND initrd=new_initrd media=cdrom rw root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=257144 init=/bin/init loglevel=3 ide=nodma ide=noraid nopat pnpbios=off vga=791 splash=silent hp_fibre showopts noexec32=off numa=off nox2apic TYPE=MANUAL iso1=nfs://x.x.x.x/SPP2012020.2012_0302.51.iso iso1mnt=/mnt/bootdevice pci=bfsort ipappend 2

Note that credit goes to Gerardo Arceri as well for his APPEND example in the following post: http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-BladeSystem-Management/Support-Pack-for-Proliant-Firmware-Update-over-PXE/td-p/5375433

HTH

[shocko]

So the general consensus seems to be that out of the box, this isn't possible unless we modify the internal script?