On 6/19/2013 4:19 PM, Robin Smidsrød wrote:
Well, you're writing directly to the block device instead of using
high-level file routines. It's understandable that you need to flush
the device cache for that kind of activity.
Understandable to one who understands all the intricacies of what is
happening perhaps ;)
Can you give us a screenshot/picture of what's going on? My guess is you
might be dealing with a driver strangeness, especially if you're using
the existing bnx2 (Broadcom) driver. I'd recommend you try to build with
DEBUG=bnx2,tg3 to see if you get any more info out of it. Also, when you
boot up iPXE, what value do you have for "chip" when using the "config"
command?
Again, not understanding all the inner workings of this, I need
something more to work with here.
Are you saying I should delete the ipxe directory, git clone again, and
then "make DEBUG=bnx2,tg3" then dd the ipxe.usb built from that?
I found the ipxe command line and pulled the config on 3 of the systems
I'm working with most. Their chip values are:
Dell: 82566dm-2 (Intel gig ethernet?)
MacBook Pro: ar5416 (Atheros? I think it's listing the wireless
instead of the ethernet since it seems to go through these in the
"wrong" order? Not sure how to pull "chip2" as it were...)
Mac Mini: 14e4-16b4 (broadcom?)
The first thing is to start showing us what you're actually doing
instead of just talking about it. Details, details, details! To be able
to debug remotely we need logs, hardware details and descriptions of
your setup and what you're trying to do. It would also be useful to
understand what your end goal is, maybe you're going about it in the
wrong, or unoptimal, way.
Short of getting a camera and uploading a photo documentary somewhere of
what I'm doing, I'm not sure what you're asking for here (I can do that
if need be, just take a bit). I thought I had in my "talking" given a
lot of details about what I'm doing and working with, sorry if it's not
what you're looking for, it was all I knew to say. With such a low
level thing, and no readable file system, how are there any logs that I
could send and where are they? If you have specific questions (like the
chips above) or can tell me things you'd like me to do, I'm happy to
accommodate. To review though:
I have a WDS server set up with multiple boot images and restore images
working as desired when PXE booting Dell systems to deploy a system
image to them.
I'd like to be able to do this same thing but on our dual boot Mac
systems. Because EFI on a Mac has no PXE layer, I can't boot from the
WDS server natively. Google led me to gPXE, which works perfectly from
CD. So far so good.
To be more convenient, I wanted to use gPXE from a USB key rather than
have people deal with CDs both in bulk and speed. Also, some Mac
systems like the Air have no built in Cd drive. This is where it all
stopped.
gPXE doesn't work from USB as it does from CD.
I have been told to stop trying to deal with gPXE because it's dead and
I should use iPXE.
iPXE does not work end to end at all on any system (3 different Mac, 2
different Dell, all of which gPXE from CD works fine) from any boot
media (CD or USB). As mentioned, it fails to actually initiate the boot
image once selected from WDS.
If there is a better way, or some other critical easy to miss info like
issuing an eject command that would make iPXE work, I'm all ears. Not
being any more familiar with iPXE than what is at
http://ipxe.org/download (and not even fully grasping all that), and not
being a coder or low level unix guru, exact command walk-throughs would
be helpful :) I wondered if there was something with that EFI note at
the end I should be concerned about, but there is no supporting
information to explain what that's all about.
Thanks!
Yadin
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Yadin Flammer - Systems Administrator
College of Arts& Architecture, Penn State University
228 Borland Building Office Phone: 814-865-0990
University Park, PA 16802 Dept. Phone: 814-865-1571
Email: [email protected] Dept. Fax: 814-863-6227
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