Imaging/Debug menu stuck at downloading BzImage 0%
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Hi,
I’m currently hitting my head against a brick wall with regards to a FOG imaging issue.
We are currently using 1.5.9 RC1, i think.
I am trying to image a cloudbook (Stonebook Cloud C10A) via a USB network adapter (Startech USB310000SPTB). The cloudbook doesn’t have a wired ethernet connection.
I have managed to get this working at some point in the past, but for the life of me can’t work out how. I have the USB adapter set up as an intermediary where i register the host’s wifi adapter manually in fog and use the USB adapter as a dummy host to do the imaging.
The laptop will boot as far as the FOG menu (most of the time, see later). (Screenshot 1).
However, the USB Dummy Host is not being detected within the menu and the menu says it is an unregistered host.
That would be ok, but when I try to image or run debug mode from there, the process gets stuck on downloading the bzImage file at 0%.
Occasionally, the machine will hang on downloading the relevant files to boot into fog at all, and refind has also been inconsistent when loading in order to boot from the built in ssd.
I have also experienced this downloading issue with another PC which i managed to resolve by using the Legacy PXE boot option. I do not have that option with this cloudbook.
The cloudbook is EFI booting, and we have nearly 1000 other PCs imaged using FOG that work pretty reliably for the most part.
Hopefully someone with much more knowledge of how this works than me can give me some pointers. I am quite familiar with fog having learnt through trial and error over many years, but haven’t quite got my head around the sequence of events in the background.
Thanks!
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@lcsmd I see it has you have 2 different issues at the moment.
- The mac address is changing between iPXE and FOS Linux.
- The image transfer stalling out loading bzImage (FOS Linux kernel).
You are able to get iPXE to boot so your chromebook has an i86 compatible processor in it (in the era of ARM you always have to ask).
Lets tackle the mac address thing first since hopefully that is the easiest. We have seen this in the past where the firmware bios has an option switch for “mac address pass through” This is where the laptop doesn’t have a physical network adapter, but contains a mac address for the physical adapter. The idea is that the built in mac address would overwrite what is in the USB dongle making the device have a unique mac address even if you are using a single dongle for all of your device. This is great and exactly what we would want in an ideal world. FOS Linux’s driver understands this pass through uefi request and honors it.
The problem comes in at the iPXE level, its drivers are not as advanced as linux so it only sees the mac address of the dongle and not the pass through address built into the tablet.
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Thanks for your reply.
I should have mentioned that the cloudbook is an intel based windows laptop. I think their “cloudbook” definition basically means “Low spec, not much storage”
I can’t find any bios settings about mac passthrough on the laptop itself.
I have noticed if i disable the IMI flag in the fog settings for the USB adapter, the laptop stalls at 0% on bzImage before getting to the fog menu. When i re-enable the flag, it will boot back into the menu.
Do i need to try some updated ipxe/efi boot files from somewhere?
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@lcsmd For this specific model we may need to bypass iPXE because its not compatible with this limited hardware. We do have a way to boot directly into FOS Linux from a usb drive. Does this hardware support booting via USB?
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@george1421
It’s certainly worth a try. I don’t see why it wouldn’t as it will let me boot from the USB LAN adapter.Do we have some instructions on creating a bootable USB for fog? It sounds useful for other projects, too.
I have managed to image an identical PC to this previously using IPXE and the same USB adapter. I just can’t remember what i did to get it to work! I do remember it took me ages and celebrating like i’d won the world cup at the time. I thought i’d written down what i did, but i’m unable to find the notes i made.
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@lcsmd I have a tutorial here how to create the FOS Linux boot drive.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image
Because of the way the forum works part 1 is at the top of the article and part 2 is at the very bottom.
Also look at your forum chat for a few additional hints to get started.
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@george1421
I have managed to get the USB LAN to boot at last!I ended up using the ncm–ecm–axge.efi boot file and it stopped stalling.
Thanks for all your help, i will look into the USB boot as I am sure it will be useful in future situations.
Might be worth including it on the following page?
Startech USB31000SPTB works with ncm–ecm–axge.efihttps://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/WorkingDevices#USB_Ethernet_Adapters
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@lcsmd Thank you for reporting back on how to get it working. When adding it to the wiki I figured out it uses the “ASIX AX88179” chip and we had some of the Startech devices listed in the “Notes” column already. So I added your USB31000SPTB to that list as well to be found by others - including the hint to use a different iPXE binary.
I have to say the list is not really up to date. Mainly the notes are not because it’s a lot of work to keep it up with information from forum posts only. Nor do we have time and resources to test all the hardware ourselves.
