well, it turns out that the installer, when accessed over a remote
serial connection, forgets its kernel options when going into rescue mode
i.e.:
boot: CR #works just fine
boot: rescue CR # fails miserably
boot: rescue console=ttyS2,115200n8 #works just fine
(now to wrestle with whatever it is that grub messed up to make the
installation unbootable)
Miles Fidelman wrote:
A little more info:
Miles Fidelman wrote:
Hi Folks,
Not getting a lot of help on debian-user, so thought I might raise
this here.
I've been trying to build a headless server, remotely, using the
netboot installer (PXEboot) and a serial-over-ip terminal provided by
the motherboard's (Supermicro X8SIE-LN4F) on-board IPMI BMC.
The thing is, that the serial terminal is rather crippled - some
things seem to get recognized, others not (function keys are
particularly problematic, though that might be the Mac term program).
I can get the installer to load and provide a boot prompt, and run a
straight install (simple CR to the boot prompt), but...
- can't use any kind of graphical interface or VT100 type interface -
only supports straight ASCII, sort of
- putting DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text into the kernal options (on the boot
server) just results in the installer hanging
- typing a CR to the boot prompt leads to a working installer, and
when I get to the point of shifting to an SSH net console, all works
fine, except as below (had to set priority=low in the kernal options
for this)
- can't seem to escape to the shell, except via the menu
- the most serious issue is that it seems impossible to type anything
at the boot prompt, except a CR, without the installer hanging
---- can't type boot options at the boot prompt
---- can't get into rescue mode - which is really problematic as I'm
having some problems getting either grub or lilo to install properly
-------- in this regard, I tried putting rescue/enable=true into the
kernal options on the boot server, but it doesn't seem to be recognized
Turns out that changing
SERIAL 0 115200 to SERIAL SERIAL 2 115200
in ../pxelinux.cfg/default helps a bit
(for reference, kernel options, in ../boot-screens/txt.cfg are
append vga=790 initrd=debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz --
console=ttyS2,115200n8 earlyprint=serial,ttyS2,115200n8 priority=low)
now, if I type CR after boot:, I see a mini-menu that gives me the
choice of install, expert install, rescue mode, BUT...
any option other than install simply hangs
So... general comment that, at least in the stable version, the
installer really doesn't support a basic remote serial terminal all
that well.
so this question remains critical:
More immediate HELP request: Any suggestions on how I can boot into
rescue mode via the remote terminal?
Thanks very much,
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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