[CUWiN-Dev] upgrade/partition table problems

[Matthew Isaacs]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bill Comisky wrote:
> On 2/28/07, Bill Comisky <bcomisky at pobox.com> wrote:
>> On 2/28/07, Matthew Isaacs <isaacsm at cuwireless.net> wrote:
>   <snip>
>> > Someone emailed the support list the other day with this problem.  I
>> > thought it might be a bug with the memory disk image used to PXE boot
>> > the person's node.  I'll have the run fdisk -vv to confirm that it is
>> > the same problem.
>> >
>> > Regarding the corrupt partition table, I believe fixlabel was designed
>> > to be used in the instances.  Alternatively, one could PXE boot the
>> node
>> > with and memory-disk image and run the upgrade from that.  The current
>> > md image is at 0.7.0, so it *shouldn't* pose any problem.
>> >
>> > Hope that helps.
>>
>> I'll take a look at fixlabel when I get a chance.  As far as PXE
>> booting, is there any way to initiate that without having serial
>> console access in order to interrupt the boot process and enter the
>> BIOS?
> 
> I didn't read Dave's PXE boot HOWTO closely enough last time..
> 
> "It is best if your CUWiN nodes always PXE boot, first.  To make
> sure they do, you need to boot your node with a serial console
> attached, break into the comBIOS monitor with Ctrl-P, and 'set
> bootdrive=f0 80 81 ff'.  Not all comBIOS versions support 'set
> bootdrive'.  You may need to update your comBIOS to 1.28 (or whatever
> is the latest version)."
> 
> Anyone know how long the 4526 will attempt to PXE boot this way before
> failing and booting from flash?  That is, can I make this setting
> permanent on the nodes without much (re)boot time penalty?
> 
> Bill
> 

It waits a few seconds.  All of the nodes in the Urbana testbed are
setup in this manner, and I think it is enabled by default in the more
recent bios releases from soekris.  If it is not currently setup boot
from the network, that doesn't solve the problem of getting to the
nodes.  Hopefully, they're already setup that way, and if not, then
maybe fixlabel will do the trick.  Looking at the source, it basically
destroys the MBR and partition table and rebuilds it for the 4526, so it
should fix the problem, as long as the flash isn't corrupt/bad.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF5gRgFTAfZok65zkRAqRyAJ9GC/uDRqepCLixE8yVUvgIyzmzTQCgqSbj
yhhghp8v3beW8Gm9W6Q49tI=
=HnaE
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----