Dell Venue Pro 8 PXE boot issues
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Ok, we are making progress, so far we see the FOG menu now, and we can select boot to hard disk and that works.
but selecting any other option we first get two lines of text:
/bzimage
/init.xz…OKthen it cycles back to the menu. Selecting any option other than boot to hard disk after that shows
/init.xz…OK
Then back to the menu again and repeat
FOG does not seem to be honoring the FOG_PXE_MENU_TIMEOUT (always 3) and FOG_QUICKREG_AUTOPOP either - not sure if this is due to using SVN/Trunk
Thanks again for your help
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[quote=“rball01, post: 46196, member: 29220”]Ok, we are making progress, so far we see the FOG menu now, and we can select boot to hard disk and that works.
but selecting any other option we first get two lines of text:
/bzimage
/init.xz…OKthen it cycles back to the menu. Selecting any option other than boot to hard disk after that shows
/init.xz…OK
Then back to the menu again and repeat
FOG does not seem to be honoring the FOG_PXE_MENU_TIMEOUT (always 3) and FOG_QUICKREG_AUTOPOP either - not sure if this is due to using SVN/Trunk
Thanks again for your help[/quote]
Set the hide-menu timeout and the menu timeout to 4 or 5.
Also, the menu might be “There” but the graphics controller and/or monitor just hasn’t started showing it yet because it’s changing over.As soon as you see “initializing devices” on the screen, start hitting the down arrow. This will “Catch” the menu.
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We see the menu, but the different options are just looping back to the menu as described above
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This might be a tough road to go down, but I think you ought to try to build your own files for 32 bit. You will probably need help from both the iPXE people, and the FOG Project’s own Tom and Uncle Frank.
There are instructions in the WiKi and in the Forum for building the files, but I’m not sure about x86. I’ve only built x64 and I struggled a bit with it. We have updated the WiKi and forum to reflect what had to be done to get it to work on Fedora/Ubuntu. I’ve also heard things about requiring a 32 bit system to compile 32 bit software in Linux… maybe I’m wrong… I have no idea.
Here are some links that I’ve found that may help:
[url]http://fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Building_undionly.kpxe[/url]
[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/build-ipxe-from-source.10152/#post-24197[/url]
[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/dell-7010-lenovo-l530-with-uefi-enabled-wont-network-boot.12727/#post-45357[/url] -
Thanks Wayne, I think the issue is with bzimage and/or init.xz since I am seeing the FOG menu, but to be honest I don’t know what they are or if they are 32 bit
I think my ipxe issues may have been solved in the current trunk
I am hoping Tom will have a suggestion on where i can look for clues, I can post a video if it helps
Thanks again for your suggestions and help
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rball01,
Please, if you can post a video feel free. It really is more helpful to know the full scope instead of just throwing out ideas.
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Thanks, I will get a video capture first thing Monday morning and upload. I really appreciate the help, and I love FOG btw, killer product
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Good morning, here is the video capture of the FOG menu behavior. Sorry it is sideways, not sure what the phone was doing. Wasn’t able to upload the MOV file, so you will have to download and change extension to MOV.
Thanks,
Rob[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1926_IMG_0595.txt?:”]IMG_0595.txt[/url]
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If it helps we were able to boot into Ubuntu Linux 64 bit Desktop on the Venue Pro 8 by following this article
and changing the resolution from [SIZE=15px][FONT=Monaco][COLOR=#656565]1368x768e to 800x1280e[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
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We deleted init.xz and bzimage and renamed init_32.xz and bzimage_32 to them in /var/www/fog/service/ipxe
This got us a little further
We got to the Host Information menu, but then we lose all USB functionality, including the ethernet dongle and keyboard, so we can’t get any further on that screen either.
[ATTACH]1929[/ATTACH]When we select Host Registration we get some errors and it appears to fail to find a storage device, errors pictures are attached:
[ATTACH]1928[/ATTACH]Thanks for all your assistance
[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1928_20150427_131348.jpg?:”]20150427_131348.jpg[/url][url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1929_20150427_131404.jpg?:”]20150427_131404.jpg[/url]
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IME the loss of USB devices is caused by turning off Legacy USB in the BIOS.
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So where is the road-block now?
Can you explain everything you’ve done to get this far? Just for future reference to others (and me).
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Hi Wayne,
Most of the steps we’ve taken are on the first page of the thread, in summary:
Used the latest Trunk/SVN - fixed the loading issue with bg.png
Pointed Windows Server DHCP options at ipxe.efi - got us to the FOG menu
Replaced the original versions of of init.xz and bzimage with the 32 bit versions (deleted and renamed) - stopped the menu from looping back to itself and appeared to actually load FOGAt this point the roadblock is that we get to host registration (as mentioned above), the errors are thrown, and FOG reports no Hard disk found
This may or may not be related to the issue that if we choose Host Information - the USB port seems to have stopped functioning and we lose keyboard/network access
We are downloading the latest trunk now (looks like it was just updated) to see if that affects anything
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It looks like the issue is now very similar to this one:
I don’t want to cross post on both, so I will ask, how do I set the “Host Primary Disk” to mmcblk? That’s probably the next step to try in getting this thing going.
Edit I was thinking about this too hard, was just told its a menu option. We will give it a shot.
In the meantime, I’ll try the kernels that Tom had linked in that thread to see if there is any difference. We have tried to build a custom kernel with all the mmc options checked, but did not seem to change anything.
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This should help…
[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1949_Host Primary Disk.png?:”]Host Primary Disk.png[/url]
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For the record, the ONLY way I was ever able to hit the Partclone screen/pull inventory was by setting the Host Primary Disk to:
/dev/mmcblk0
I tried /dev/mmcblk, mmcblk, mmcblk0, etc and that’s the only one that’s ever worked for me.
Hopefully this can help save you some time/headaches
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[quote=“d4rk3, post: 46641, member: 23583”]For the record, the ONLY way I was ever able to hit the Partclone screen/pull inventory was by setting the Host Primary Disk to:
/dev/mmcblk0
I tried /dev/mmcblk, mmcblk, mmcblk0, etc and that’s the only one that’s ever worked for me.
Hopefully this can help save you some time/headaches :)[/quote]
Were you able to successfully register the host, or did you use manual registration?
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From what we can tell, the problem we are having now is that the USB NIC (SABRENT NT-USB2.0) is not being loaded correctly when FOG is starting. We tried downloading the newest linux driver for it and dropping in to a custom kernel build, but it didn’t seem to help.
Similar to this thread, but with a different model:
[url]http://fogproject.org/forum/threads/realtek-8153-usb-network-adapter.10302/[/url]We will try Tom’s kernels and see if they help at all, but if anyone has any suggestions on this USB NIC, they are appreciated.
Thanks - Rob
The good news is that when we try to do the host inventory, even though we can’t actually get it registered, it does tell us the disk is being recognized
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[quote=“rball01, post: 46645, member: 29220”]Were you able to successfully register the host, or did you use manual registration?[/quote]
Here’s how I pulled inventory on 517 Asus T100TA’s…
I did 10 at a time. I had 10 USB–>LAN adapters, all labeled 01-10. I had a list of the MAC addresses for each adapter.
I then added each tablet to my FOG hosts with my desired hostnames and their corresponding MAC addresses.
Then I had to set their Host Primary Disk to /dev/mmcblk0. Then I had to create a new group with all 10 of them in it. Then I could finally start the inventory task.
Mind you, I also had to disable Secure Boot on every one first, then let them start inventory. I always got some kernel panics too, and had to reboot them until they finally started the task. Sometimes any device could take four reboots before the kernel stopped panicking lol
Pain in my ass is an understatement lol…
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As for Partclone, it could never find the hard disk to start the image upload task.
Same thing for inventory…FOG was unable to fill in the hard disk field on all of them…
