>>>>> On Thu, 9 Aug 2007 09:37:02 +0200, Henning Fehrmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>>> said:
> we are interested in flashing a BIOS image and in manipulating the NVRAM
of the motherboard
> automatically.
Wow. Do you really need this?
> Unfortunately, using certain vendors, the access to the NVRAM is not
straightforward.
> These vendors are offering DOS tools only, to write in the NVRAM, hence,
we have to boot
> a DOS image and here starts the trouble.
You can boot a DOS or floppy image using PXE. This is how a
pxelinux.cfg looks like for booting a floppy image:
default dos
label dos
kernel memdisk
append keeppxe initrd=floppy.img
But AFAIR I had no success, because the dos flashing utilities seems
to wanna have a real floppy, not a fake of a floppy.
> Optimally, using the DOS environment flashes the BIOS, sets the
> NVRAM and sends a message to the FAI server to prepare the next boot of
the clients for the
> installation.
You could send a message to the faimond which can change the pxelinux
configuration.
> In the worst case, the DOS environment is working autonomously and the
FAI server is 'guessing'
> whether the BIOS is flashed or not, e.g., by analyzing the DHCP logs, but
this is not what we really want.
Guessing if something has changed could easily be done using dmidecode,
which will give you the version of the BIOS.
--
regards Thomas
