On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 12:19:34 PM Ross Boylan wrote: > On Mon, 2012-11-12 at 21:57 -0500, Neal Murphy wrote: > > Does your box have a serial port? > > No. USB and LAN ports. I investigated SOL, serial over LAN, and IPMI, > but can't get access to it; apparently it ordinarily must be enabled on > the target machine as a first step (if it's there at all, which I > suspect it is since an Intel mobo DH77DF). > > > Can it be configured to display the BIOS > > screen on the serial port? Can Debian be installed using a serial port? > > That is, connect a null-modem serial cable between the box to be > > installed and some other computer and use minicom (Linux) or Hyperterm > > (Win). > > > > Or put the hard drive into another regular computer, > > The system is diskless. Also, I have no other amd64 computers. > > > install there, then move > > the drive back to the target box. And (1) enable a getty on /dev/ttyS0 > > and (2) add 'console=ttys0,115200' to grub. The only oddity you should > > encounter here is that the target box's NIC won't be eth0; this results > > from how udev works, but it can be changed if desired. > > > > Grub0 can be configured to poll both the VESA console and a serial port, > > then use whichever gets the first keystroke (or time out and use the > > selected default). I don't know how (or if) Grub2 handles this > > situation. So if the box has no drive and no VESA console and you cannot > > redirect the BIOS to a serial port, you'll be blind until grub starts. > > > > Another possibility. Check if the system has a compact flash socket. > > Since it has USB I believe I could boot from that. But there again, it > would expect me to control it from the local computer . > > > If so, > > > > you could effectively install a /boot to it with a custom initramfs that > > contains enough command line tools (and libs) to run a fairly minimal > > 'live' system in RAM; this might take a 100-300 MiB. As it boots, it can > > mount the rest of what it needs over the net. My firewall has a smallish > > initramfs (30MiB compressed CPIO, about 100MiB in RAM). It's a fairly > > fully usable environment with a real init and a few real tools with > > busybox handling others; I made it to ease debugging the install > > process. It works well on standard computers and works well on headless > > systems like the Lanner 7530 and 7539 network appliances using a serial > > console. > > > > You *can* do what you want, but it requires you to roll up your sleeves > > and get up to your elbows in slimy bits. But then, Debian might have > > something for this already. The hard part will be to redirect the > > install session to a serial port. > > I've gotten a little further, though still no joy. > I took the terminal-based testing netboot material for amd64 (only used > the linux and pxelinux.0 files) and created a config file with the magic > name including the UUID of the new client. It has > label install > menu label ^Install > menu default > kernel linux > append vga=788 root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=192.168.40.2:/mnt/amd64 > timeout 50 > totaltimeout 300 > This effectively bypasses most of the other files (and their screwy > paths) > > /mnt/amd64 has the results of running > debootstrap --arch=amd64 --foreign --include openssh-server > --variant=minbase testing amd64 http://debian.betterworld.us:\ > 3142/mainline > from my testing chroot. It's exported via NFS. > > The idea was to create enough of a system that it would start and run > the ssh server so I could ssh in. On reflection, since none of the > packages are fully installed, that probably won't work even if I get > further. > > The the client shows the early linux kernel load but fails with > No Filesystem could mount root, tried: > Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on > unknown-block(0,255) > > Possibilities: > 1. The installer kernel does not support NFS. > 2. I needed to load an NFS-related package as part of deboostrap. (Also, > the man page says --include= is the syntax; I'm not sure if omitting the > "=" is a problem). > 3. Skipping the initrd suppliedd with the installer messed things up. > (I was worried using it would take me into the installer). > 4. The result of deboostrap --foreign is radically incomplete. /boot is > empty; several other key system files have stubs, including fstab. I've > been unable to discover exactly what one is supposed to do with the > material created by deboostrap --foreign. It seems the idea is to run > debootstrap --second-stage on the target system, but how to get to that > point is unclear.
Internal/External SATA, USB2, USB3, Firewire. You've plenty of disk attachment points. You should be able to use a USB-to-EIA232 adapter (that uses the USB Serial Class) to provide a serial port for console control. Do you have a modern TV (with HDMI) handy? Does your computer monitor have two inputs? Were I in your shoes, I would use any kbd/monitor I had handy to learn how to control/configure the BIOS. I would learn how to do all of it using an existing 32-bit system. I'd install to a bootable USB thumb drive. Once I learned the ins and outs, I'd then set up another bootable thumb drive with just initramfs and kernel configured to use a serial console and to boot diskless. In short, you're poking in the dark. Connect a keyboard and monitor to it so you can see what you're doing and to configure the BIOS. I did this sort of thing years back installing Linux on a CompactPCI system. First I had to figure out how to build a kernel since the standard kernels back then didn't support PREP/CHRP (and never did); I ended up installing SuSE/PPC to my BeBox and building there. Once I learned the ins and outs, I could boot it from the built in CF to either TFTP or internal HD. The whole purpose of that SBC was to set up a automatic PPP-over-SSH tunnel; and it worked well. But I wouldn't've succeeded working in the dark. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201211131721.06060.neal.p.mur...@alum.wpi.edu
