FOG kernel stalling out after PXE boot
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Which version of the boot image are you using? The wiki says that the Z400’s work with 0.29, but there were some significant changes between 0.29 and 0.30 which have been problematic for a number of people.
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I tried a couple of them, but I was afraid of breaking what is working. 3.1-rc8 Core was the last one I tried. I saw that FOC0.29 worked with the Z400s but I don’t know if that’s relevant since HP uses the same model number (Z400) for workstations spanning years. The Z400 on my bench is not the same Z400 that was available when 0.29 was released. Also, how does one tell which PXE Boot Image was deployed with which version of FOG?
Sorry if my questions seem simple; I’m not fluent in Unix. -
The boot images are not updated between version releases, so the 0.29 boot image was the same from release until 0.30 which received an new boot image, and so on.
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OK; so what boot image was used in 0.29?
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The boot images don’t really have version numbers
To get the boot image from 0.29 go to the sourceforge project page for FOG and download [URL=‘http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeghost/files/FOG/fog_0.29/’]FOG 0.29[/URL] to your FOG server. Go to /tftpboot/fog/images/ and rename init.gz to init.gz.BACKUP (or whatever). Open the downloaded package and go to fog_0.29/packages/tftp/fog/images/, and copy init.gz into /tftpboot/fog/images/. Make sure the ownership and permissions are the same for init.gz and init.gz.BACKUP, and then PXE boot one of your Z400 computers to give it a try.
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OK; I get the same message with the init.gz from the 0.29 package.
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And just to make sure I did everything right (since Unix is not my primary language):
/tftpboot/fog/images$ ls -l
total 36628
-rw-r–r-- 1 fog root 30971987 2010-05-11 08:25 init.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 fog root 6530155 2011-11-30 16:12 init.gz.BACKUP -
Hey Bob, I am about to throw an older video card into one of my new machines, I will let you know how it goes.
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OK, I swapped out the Quadro 2000 and tossed in a Geforce 9800GTX+ and PXE boots past the initial FOG menu. It complaines that the BIOS for the Z400 is unknown, but appears to function as expected. I’m going to pull an image now and see how it goes.
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OK, I swapped out the Quadro 2000 and tossed in a Geforce 9800GTX+ and PXE boots past the initial FOG menu. It complaines that the BIOS for the Z400 is unknown, but appears to function as expected. I’m going to pull an image now and see how it goes.
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Hey Bob, I did the same and it worked also, and I get the same unknown error on the MB too. I am lucky to have onboard Intel HDMI out that I just enable to image, I have also found that enabling the onboard video the computers will still image, though they will not show anything on the screen this is using the [FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#333333]Kernel - 2.6.36.1 Core.[/COLOR][/FONT]
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Looks like we now have a problem with the RAID. The workstations are using the MOBO built in raid controller to have the 2 HDs in RAID0 to increase performance. The 0.29 kernel didn’t see anything and just crashed, so I switched back to the old kernel and got an image. Unfortunatley, dropping the image back boots to a “Non system disk” error…
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Did you build the image on the RAID? If yes try these instructions to see if it’s the boot sector then re-sysprep and re-image from that machine. [url]http://www.heiser.net/posts/3256[/url]
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Yes; the image was built on a RAID. Tried the steps from the link you provided and the link that page referenced, but as far as DISKPART goes, it thinks the DISK has no partitions so none of that works.
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At the risk of being accused of Thread Necromancy, I wanted to check in on these issues.
Seems that the OP & my initial issue was indeed caused by the Quadro in my case. Since my last post, I have researched Linux kernel-making, and have cooked up a kernel that now boots fine with the Quadro in the machine. Unfortunately, I am still unable to have FOG see the built-in Intel RAID controller properly (Firmware-RAID), and just can’t figure out how to get the kernel to see the RAID container instead of the individual disks… I see many posts about this issue with no solutions, and would very much like to get a solution.
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Nice one Bob! I had the exact same problem with the same hardware (z400), i swapped the quadro for a cheap geforce and it did the trick! Thanks!
[quote=“Bob Fillmore, post: 1085, member: 294”]OK, I swapped out the Quadro 2000 and tossed in a Geforce 9800GTX+ and PXE boots past the initial FOG menu. It complaines that the BIOS for the Z400 is unknown, but appears to function as expected. I’m going to pull an image now and see how it goes. :)[/quote]
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Glad my efforts helped someone.
Unfortunately, the lack of Firmware RAID support was a show stopper for us and I was forced to box my FOG servers and go with Acronis Snap Deploy.
I really like what FOG has to offer and I hope that someone will figure out this Firmware Raid issue so that we can go back to FOG in the future.
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Also got a Z68XP-UD3 Gigabyte mobo and no dice for me. Wondering did anyone get it to work?