[H-GEN] no external media, how to boot?

[Sarah Hollings]

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Hi All,

I've got my hands on a little machine (form factor about that of a phone 
book) which I want to install Debian on[1].

It has no external media options at all[2], so I thought I'd try this:

http://www.debianplanet.com/node.php?id=818

...seeing the little machine has a NIC (on board) which claims PXE 
compliance.

The setup of the server (another Debian machine) went fine[3], and when 
I boot the little client machine it contacts DHCP and gets an IP 
address, then I see:

--------8<---------------------

PXELINUX 3.04 (Debian, 2003-06-11)  Compyright (C) 2003 H. Peter Anvin
Found PXENV+ Structure
PXE API version is 0201
UNDI data segment at:    0009D680
UNDI data segment size:  3288
UNDI code segment at:    00090000
UNDI code segment size:  2500
PXE entry point found (we hope) at 9D68:00F6
My IP address seems to be 9862D918 152.98.217.27
ip=152.98.217.27:152.98.217.6:152.98.217.30:255.255.255.192
TFTP prefix:
Trying to load: pxelinux.cfg/9862D91B
boot:pxe
.

Loading.

--------8<---------------------

whereapon it hangs, and stays hung.

Running tcpdump on the server I saw an arp request going out from the 
server doing a who-has on 152.98.217.27, and no reply coming back.

I tried "arp -s 152.98.217.27 ma:ca:dd:re:ss" but that didn't help.

I suspect that the tcp traffic isn't getting down the segment from the 
(managed) switch, or something like that.

Any ideas anyone?
-- 
Sarah Hollings                     IT Manager
sarah at humanfactors.uq.edu.au       The ARC Key Centre
Ph +61 7 33656080                  for Human Factors and
Mb +61 416 045401                  Applied Cognitive Psychology

==================================================================

Notes: [1]
http://www.s2s.ch/images/aktuelles/hp_vectra.jpg
The plan is to use it as a dedicated network monitoring machine, and run 
snort and nessus - I can plug it in anywhere (due to its small size and 
quietness) and leave it to collect data.

        [2]
I does have USB, but getting it to boot anything from that seems fraught 
with much more peril than PXE.  There is a mention of USB floppy booting 
on Debians site but it involves 7 floppy images and, well, then I have 
to try to get my sony USB floppy working, pain, pain..

        [3]
To save on boot time I did:

cp /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/9862D918

as it tries a bunch of different files, starting with "9862D918" (the 
numeric version of the ip address IIRC) and ending up with "default".

Apart from that I used tftpd-hpa and ISC's dhcp 3 (compiled from source) 
and went exactly as described in the above howto.


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