problems with remote install using ipmi serial-over-ip
 

Hi Folks,

Well, I've been trying to do a remote install onto a server (Supermicro
X8SIE-LN4F motherboard) - booting via PXE, and using a serial-over-IP
terminal provided by the IPMI board.


Took a bit to get it mostly working - DHCP, TFTP, PXE, net boot all work.

The serial-over-ip terminal, sort of works.... - I can get the installer
to load, and give me a boot> prompt, and a simple CR gets it running. I
can go all the way through, and it sure seems like I've partitioned the
drive, installed all the software, and so forth, but.... when I restart,
the system hangs. I'm guessing it might be a grub install problem, but
now I'm stuck...


- typing anything at the boot> prompt, except a CR (e.g., boot
parameters, expert, rescue) leads to a hang - so I can't do either of
the obvious troubleshooting steps:

- going into rescue mode and playing with grub
- reinstalling, but using an SSH connection instead of the serial-over-IP

And, just for the heck of it, I tried putting *|rescue/enable=true into
the append clause in
/srv/tftp/debian-installer/amd64/boot-screens/txt.cfg - where the
installer picks up its boot parameters - but it seems to be ignored|*


Kind of wracking my brain here. Any thoughts on what I might try next?

Thanks,

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra


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problems with remote install using ipmi serial-over-ip
 

Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
> Well, I've been trying to do a remote install onto a server (Supermicro
> X8SIE-LN4F motherboard) - booting via PXE, and using a serial-over-IP
> terminal provided by the IPMI board.

> The serial-over-ip terminal, sort of works.... - I can get the installer
> to load, and give me a boot> prompt, and a simple CR gets it running. I
> can go all the way through, and it sure seems like I've partitioned the
> drive, installed all the software, and so forth, but.... when I restart,
> the system hangs. I'm guessing it might be a grub install problem, but
> now I'm stuck...

Does the IPMI give you a virtual CD/DVD drive, too? My experience with
remote installations on Dell kit a couple of years ago was that the
drive order changed after installation, and the boot code wasn't happy
with that.

I used to need to edit the kernel boot line, along with the hd(0,0)
stanza, and then also fix up /etc/fstab. (That last has been handled
somewhat better by referencing the root partition by label or uuid,
but back then it wasn't done that way.)

Chris


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problems with remote install using ipmi serial-over-ip
 

Chris Davies wrote:

Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

Well, I've been trying to do a remote install onto a server (Supermicro
X8SIE-LN4F motherboard) - booting via PXE, and using a serial-over-IP
terminal provided by the IPMI board.
The serial-over-ip terminal, sort of works.... - I can get the installer
to load, and give me a boot> prompt, and a simple CR gets it running. I
can go all the way through, and it sure seems like I've partitioned the
drive, installed all the software, and so forth, but.... when I restart,
the system hangs. I'm guessing it might be a grub install problem, but
now I'm stuck...

Does the IPMI give you a virtual CD/DVD drive, too? My experience with
remote installations on Dell kit a couple of years ago was that the
drive order changed after installation, and the boot code wasn't happy
with that.

I used to need to edit the kernel boot line, along with the hd(0,0)
stanza, and then also fix up /etc/fstab. (That last has been handled
somewhat better by referencing the root partition by label or uuid,
but back then it wasn't done that way.)


Yeah... it sure does seem to be a grub issue.

Finally managed to figure out how to get into the installer's rescue
mode, over a remote serial connection. It turns out that the installer,
when accessed over a remote serial connection, forgets its kernel
options when going into rescue mode


i.e.:
the installer netboots (PXE) with boot options loaded from
/srv/tftp/debian-installer/amd64/boot-screens/txt.cfg:

console=ttyS2,115200n8 earlyprint=serial,ttyS2,115200n8 priority=low

when the boot: prompt comes up on the remote serial console

boot: CR #works just fine
boot: rescue CR # fails miserably
boot: rescue console=ttyS2,115200n8 #works just fine

Sigh....

Off to figure out what grub-install messed up!



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra


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