Stephen Gregory wrote:
I am stumped then.
Welcome to my world. :)
With the most recent EtherBoot releases (as available from
Rom-O-Matic without the need to compile anything yourself), PXE
support is compiled in by default. Those ROMs will be able to either
load bpbatch, PXELinux, any PXE second stage loader, or the
traditional mknbi-tagged Linux kernels directly.
On that thought, I did a Google search for "pxelinux ehterboot" and
found: http://osdir.com/ml/network.etherboot.user/2005-11/msg00027.html
Now this one shows the message I got: pxelinux.0: not a valid image
and goes on to say you need Etherboot versions >= 5.3.7
So, I did not have etherboot install on the server but could do:
apt-cache show etherboot
which shows Version: 5.4.2-1.1ubuntu2
Now, I am wondering if I am looking in the wrong place.
What is complaining about the pxelinux.0 not being a valid image?
I think it is the diskless node, right?
Then it is the code running on my USB key.
Could it be that 'it' is too old (created it a few years ago)?
Is it the sis900.zlilo file from ROM-O-Matic or other files on the key?????
I did find some notes stating that you should use tftpd-hpa as other
tftpd servers don't support PXE properly. Many of those notes were
from 5 years ago though.
Hmm, I have an entry in /etc/inetd.conf for tftp so I just commented it
out. I already had tftpd-hpa installed but just noticed I did not start
it. :)
It is now running. I will try one more time and then move on to ...
At this point I would cut my losses and use the usb drive(s) to load
the kernel. Using syslinux to load the kernel you can still run the
clients over nfs. If you only have one thumb drive you can remove it
after the kernel is loaded.
Nope, I have four 16 MB USB drives with syslinux on them.
I have also stopped by PC Cyber and picked up four 2GB USB keys for $7
each last week .... just in case.
Copy your initrd and vmlinuz images to the thumb drive. Syslinux and
Pxelinux use the same config file format so copy the lines from
pxelinux.cfg/default to the syslinux config file. (Your posted it
earlier. I can't remember the name.)
:) syslinux.cfg
As you run you machines headless you may want to enable the serial
console.
Don't think I need this as I have a KVM hooked up to the server and one
of the nodes so I can watch it boot. Once debugged I will never need to
see the nodes boot.
Are you using the most recent images from rom-o-matic?
No. :(
There is a special PXE format. I think it is raw 386 opcodes.
A hexdump does look like that. :)
Thanks Stephen, I will check out ROM-O-Matic and tftp-hpa and then build
new USB keys ... sigh
Richard