Hello, On Sun, 2007-07-01 at 13:41 +0200, Flemming Frandsen wrote: > Kannaiyan Natesan wrote: > > Thanks Bob. > > How would I go with the installation? > > Attach an CDROM first and install on CF and boot from there? Any other > > shortcuts available? > > There are two ways that I've used: > 1) Stick the CF card in a card adaptor and write an image from a desktop > machine. > 2) Boot the Soekris via PXE (network boot) and install via the network. > > #2 is the only one available on the models that have the flash soldered > on the board.
I'm not sure why some people so vigorously cling to option (1). It may seem quick and easy at first, but if you dive into the soekris-tech archives, you will find that in almost all (or just all) cases, boot trouble occurrs with CF cards burned on a MAC/PC and then transferred to the Soekris boxen. OpenBSD-based docs at least will tell you to start up the Soekris first and write down the C/H/S layout, and then pass it to the CF setup script, but in GRUB/Linux-related docs any awareness of disk geometry and related problems just seems to be absent. For example, if Lilo will boot an image which GRUB won't, it may be because Lilo does far more extensive checks (and will even rewrite a PT entry if told so - see ignore-table/fix-table), but it is far more likely that the "new" C/H/S layout (as the Soekris BIOS* sees it) just __happens to__ point to the correct sector. Burning a CF card externally is nothing but an ugly hack, and from a technical point of view it is probably entirely unsupported (dunno if there are any standars about this issue, maybe the original IBM PC standard had someting to say about this). IMHO it should be strongly discouraged, or else labeled "experts only". I've installed various Linuxen and OpenBSD onto a net4521 and a net4801 over NFS, and I've never had any boot trouble. And as said, I don't think I've ever seen "won't boot" reports from other list members who do it the NFS way. Bill (* why is the BIOS always referred to as comBIOS in Soekris circles??) > The pyramid folks has a very nice installer and a PXE walkthough here: > http://pyramid.metrix.net/trac/wiki/InstallingPyramid/PxeBoot > -- "Fix bugs first, add features later" _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
