Re: Booting from disk, Etherboot 5.2

Sebastian Lara wrote on 9/2/09 5:37 PM:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to revive a Linux Networx EVelocity 2 Cluster but I'm
> having troubles with compute nodes localboot. We are using Linux Rocks
> and compute nodes have LinuxBIOS with Etherboot 5.2.

Hello,

I wonder if coreboot ( http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot ) 
would be helpful here?  It is the successor to LinuxBIOS.

For making ELF images with recent kernels, I suggest you look at:

     http://freshmeat.net/projects/wraplinux

Which can make .nbi and .elf files of recent kernels.  It's possible 
that LinuxBIOS doesn't require it, but for kernels 2.6.22+ older tools 
may fail to create bootable images.

> I can install the system on compute nodes generating an ELF linux
> image with mkelfImage and booting from network. After installation, I
> need to reboot the nodes and load the system from local HD.  Etherboot
> looks for an ELF image in the first 8K of the disk but I don't really
> know how to create this image and how to put it in the correct disk
> position. I tried chainloading with a FILO elf image but I don't get
> access to the IDE channel.

> How do I have generate this ELF image (Linux or a bootloader as FILO)
> and how should I put it on the first 8K of the disk?

This sounds like a good question for the coreboot folks.  I'm not sure 
whether just dd'ing the image to a partition is possible or not.

> The other option is to reburn the BIOS to get PXE, but I feel that I'm
> close to make this work...

You may get it to work, but it may also be a very "brittle" (easily 
broken) solution.  I think a better foundation of a BIOS + gPXE, or 
coreboot + SeaBIOS + gPXE may be a better long-term solution.

> I have shell access to nodes during installation. Thanks in advance
> for any help.
> Sebastián Lara Menares
> Ingeniería Civil Electrónica
> Universidad de Concepción

I hope this helps you.  I think a number of your questions would be 
better answered on the coreboot mailing list ( 
http://www.coreboot.org/Mailinglist ).

Some variables related to your decision on how to proceed might be:

   1. What's easier to get running now.
   2. What solution is maintainable and stable.
   3. Does coreboot support your nodes?
   4. Network infrastructure considerations.

Good luck, and please let us now how things go.

Marty



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