Greetings! I am currently building a PXE distro server for a company that I'm contracting for, but I'm having some problems. Here's the scoop: Some of the clients I want to install on are Angstrom blades with Intel e1000 NICs. Using the pxelinux.0 file on the FC6 distro, I can install FC6 just fine. However, FC4 bombs. The system pulls it's DHCP address just fine, and then loads the kernel and initrd.img. However, at that point, the NIC goes dead, and the install then requests the CDROM and/or user input for the rest of the install (defeating the purpose of the unattended install). As I said, the FC6 install works just fine. After many hours of research, I summised that the e1000 drivers buried in the FC4 initrd are downrev'd for that card, so I tried a *bunch* of things to get this to work: -- Downloaded and built the latest e1000 driver and added to the initrd for FC4, wouldn't load, same result, -- Tried using the FC6 vmlinuz/initrd (also FC5), wouldn't work because the FC6 install moved to yum and the trees are different, -- Built new vmlinuz kernel with the e1000 driver built in, but it came back on the load as "Invalid or corrupt kernel" (needs to be an x86_boot_sector image and not a UNIX ELF executable, how do you build *that*?), -- Tried the FC6 pxelinux.0, but was dumped back to the CRDOM prompt again. After a week and a half of trying everything but waving a dead chicken, one of my co-workers found a way to load the FC4 image, and then load the new e1000 driver manually, but, again, this defeats the purpose of the unattended install. My FC4 PXE install works just fine for the Broadcom NIC. I only saw one item about the Intel e1000 NIC on the SYSLINUX/PXELINUX mailing archives at: http://syslinux.zytor.com/archives/2007-March/008281.html but the solution (from Mr. Cody) didn't work for me. Any ideas, advice, or wisdom? Thanks, as always. ....k -=-=-=-
Kevin G. J. Freels wrote:> > -- Built new vmlinuz kernel with the e1000 driver built in, but it came > back on the load as "Invalid or corrupt kernel" (needs to be an > x86_boot_sector image and not a UNIX ELF executable, how do you build > *that*?), >"make bzImage", then get arch/i386/boot/bzImage. -hpa
On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 09:28:17AM -0700, Kevin G. J. Freels wrote:> Greetings! > > I am currently building a PXE distro server for a company that I'm > contracting for, but I'm having some problems. Here's the scoop: > > Some of the clients I want to install on are Angstrom blades with Intel > e1000 NICs. Using the pxelinux.0 file on the FC6 distro, I can install > FC6 just fine. However, FC4 bombs. The system pulls it's DHCP address > just fine, and then loads the kernel and initrd.img. However, at that > point, the NIC goes dead, and the install then requests the CDROM and/or > user input for the rest of the install (defeating the purpose of the > unattended install). As I said, the FC6 install works just fine. > > After many hours of research, I summised that the e1000 drivers buried > in the FC4 initrd are downrev'd for that card, so I tried a *bunch* of > things to get this to work: > > -- Downloaded and built the latest e1000 driver and added to the initrd > for FC4, wouldn't load, same result, > > -- Tried using the FC6 vmlinuz/initrd (also FC5), wouldn't work because > the FC6 install moved to yum and the trees are different, > > -- Built new vmlinuz kernel with the e1000 driver built in, but it came > back on the load as "Invalid or corrupt kernel" (needs to be an > x86_boot_sector image and not a UNIX ELF executable, how do you build > *that*?), > > -- Tried the FC6 pxelinux.0, but was dumped back to the CRDOM prompt again. > > After a week and a half of trying everything but waving a dead chicken, > one of my co-workers found a way to load the FC4 image, and then load > the new e1000 driver manually, but, again, this defeats the purpose of > the unattended install. My FC4 PXE install works just fine for the > Broadcom NIC.1. Expand the FC4 initrd (it should be a compressed ext2 image or a compressed cpio archive); 2. Expand the file modules/modules.cgz. It's a compressed cpio archive; 3. Replace the original e1000 driver with the one that works; 4. re-create the file modules.cgz (cpio -Hnewc | gzip > modules.cgz); 5. re-create the initrd; 6. save the new iso or replace the initrd in the tftp server. -- lfr 0/0 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/attachments/20070801/0aad0d85/attachment.sig>