[CUWiN-Dev] Unable to _flash_ a new Soekris 4526 node using PXE boot

[Bao Q. Nguyen]

Hi,

I have very few luck with these documentations, I believe I have tried
all the possible combination but not helping yet...any help is
appreciated. Thanks.

>From the User Guide, Installing the Software section, there is this
advice for PXE booting (http://www.cuwin.net/user_pxe) :

"A brand new net4526 or net4826 node has to be flashed with an initial
version of the software. This is done by PXE booting the node, logging
into it, and executing a dd to it's flash drive. PXE is a protocol for
booting remotely over ethernet. In order to do this you will need to
set up a PXE server.

If the node is already non-bootable then it'll default to PXE booting.
If it has a bootable but non-upgradable image on it then you can
render it unbootable by logging in and wiping out the boot block:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rwd0d count=32

Just connect the non-bootable node's ethernet to the same ethernet
segment as the PXE server and turn it on. Within 2 minutes or so you
should be able to log in to the node over the ethernet wire via SSH.
You can then issue the following command:
dd if=/staboot.net4526.img of=/dev/rwd0d bs=8k
You can get the appropriate IP address to connect to by checking the
PXE server's DHCP log or by pinging the broadcast address.

Instructions for PXE booting and setting up a PXE Server can be found
in the "How-to" section of this manual."

But one will notice that after booting from PXE using PXE how-to
instruction, one _do not_ have access to the file:

dd if=/staboot.net4526.img of=/dev/rwd0d bs=8k

/staboot.net4526.img

The instruction is wrong so I must get that image onto the node which
is a major obstacle because it's 64MB. If leave in the compressed
format which is 10MB, which can be store in RAM, so if there to write
a .tgz to "of" using dd?


The second option is to upgrade/flash the node, but it appeared that
_all_ documents available online want to do the online flash as the
last step. That do not appeared to be working as unlike the documents
one have to manually create the partition 0 and the upgrade script
will install what look like the MBR and activate parition 1, but  then
failed on reboot:

# ifconfig sip0 inet 10.56.232.254 netmask 0xffffff00 -alias
upgrade -f -C bnguyen at 192.168.1.2:~/upgrade.tgz
# fdisk: DIOCGDEFLABEL: Invalid argument
fdisk: DIOCGDINFO: Invalid argument
Disk: /dev/rwd0d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 977, heads: 4, sectors/track: 32 (128 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 125056

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 977, heads: 4, sectors/track: 32 (128 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 210453442400

Partition 0:
NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 32, size 62512 (31 MB, Cyls 0-488/2/17)
Making partition 0 active.
Preparing for upgrade on /dev/wd0e.
/dev/rwd0e: 30.5MB (62512 sectors) block size 8192, fragment size 1024
        using 4 cylinder groups of 7.63MB, 977 blks, 1920 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck_ffs -b #) at:
32, 15664, 31296, 46928,
Installing the upgrade.
The authenticity of host '192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 0b:c3:04:69:79:8c:4b:e9:94:c9:74:96:01:ed:42:56.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.1.2' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Password:
  9934 KB  119.05 KB/s
Updating etc/fstab
Updating primary bootstrap
Updating active partition
Disk: /dev/rwd0d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 977, heads: 4, sectors/track: 32 (128 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 125056

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 977, heads: 4, sectors/track: 32 (128 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 210453442400

comBIOS ver. 1.24  20040312  Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Soekris Engineering.

net45xx

0064 Mbyte Memory                        CPU 80486 133 Mhz

Pri Mas  064MB ATA Flash Disk            LBA 977-4-32  62 Mbyte

PXE-M00: BootManage UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)

Slot   Vend Dev  ClassRev Cmd  Stat CL LT HT  Base1    Base2   Int
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0:00:0 1022 3000 06000000 0006 2280 00 00 00 00000000 00000000 00
0:16:0 168C 0013 02000001 0116 0290 10 3C 00 A0000000 00000000 10
0:17:0 168C 0013 02000001 0116 0290 10 3C 00 A0010000 00000000 11
0:18:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E001 A0020000 05

 1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
NetBSD MBR boot
Error No active partition

No Boot device available, enter monitor.


comBIOS Monitor.   Press ? for help.

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