[Testbed-admins] MFS images, Generic Images, and customization

[Ben Burnett <bburnett@atcorp.com>]

All,
   I loaded the GENERIC images from utah and went through the editing
process to customize these.  when we go to try to reboot them and test
login the PXE MFS image no longer asks to go into interactive mode
"Type a key for interactive mode (quick, quick!)" doesn't show up.  so
we can never typew the command to go to "part: 1".  when we bypass the
PXE boot loader and choose the boot directly to FreeBSD or Linux
neither of these OSes can boot completely.  then to top it all off in
all cases I suspect we are not able to see the screen output because I
think the vga/serial redirection is messed up somehow from the PXE
image (we had to use the pxeboot.emu-null MFS image).

I'm going to go back through the customization steps and make sure
It's all correct, but I wanted to see if I could get any info from
other people about these questions:

1. Using the pxeboot.emu-null image? what are the affects of this?
Will this also affect the usage of the tips server to connect to the
nodes?

1b. I have Dell Poweredge 2950 - 2 Quad Core Intel Xeon E5450,  12 MB
Cache, 3.0 GHz, 16GB memory, 500GB HD, 3 PCIe ports, 6 Ethernet ports,
1 Serial port  do I need to upgrade drivers to use the pxeboot.emu-sio
or pxeboot.emu-vga MFS image?

2. Why wouldn't "Type a key for interactive mode (quick, quick!)" show
up and what does it mean?

3. Do I have to boot from PXE, then go to interactive mode to get the
OS to come up and connect to emulab, or can I bypass PXE and force a
boot to the C: drive  then choose from the F1 FreeBSD F2 Linux menu?

Thanks for any help.


Ben Burnett
  R&D Software Engineer: wired, wireless, ad hoc, mesh networking,
    network monitoring and data visualization
  ATC (Architecture Technology Corporation)   http://www.atcorp.com/
  bburnett@atcorp.com                         (952) 829-5864 x167
  --------Views expressed are mine and not those of ATC--------
  Personal:
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