On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 12:35:26PM -0500, Dan Kilbourne wrote: > Nathan Kinkade extolled: > > > You will probably have better luck using a more flexible boot loader > > like GRUB. How about just putting memtest86 on a floppy or CDROM and > > your techs can boot to the removable media whenever they need to test > > memory. This approach seems much more flexible, as any machine can then > > be used for tests instead of only the ones on which you have made > > special configurations. > > > > Nathan > > > I would agree, but I am looking for more of an out of the box > solution. We have a couple thousand servers, several hundred of them > running FreeBSD. I want our build team to be able to simply install > memtest as a bootloader option so that any time a machine needs to be > tested, it can be without having to be removed from the rack. > Currently we install the kernel-image-like version of it on all of our > Linux boxen with no problems, I just need to figure out how to do it > for FreeBSD. As for removable media, our machines are not built with > CDs or floppies - everything is generally done via a network installer > we have hooked up, so removable media is not an option. > > -- > ___ > Dan
Ahh, I see. Well, GRUB has the ability to load a network image. I see at the memtest86.com site that one is able to build a network bootable image of memtest86. This way you could keep a single copy on an NFS/TFTP server and it could be loaded over the network. GRUB will need to be compiled with support for the various network cards you use, though I would image that your data center probably uses mostly the same cards in all the machines. Nathan -- PGP Public Key: pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xD8527E49
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