Re: [Testbed-admins] Linux MFS - grub2 issues

[Ryan Jackson <rdjackso@flux.utah.edu>]

* Jos De Graeve <Jos.DeGraeve@intec.ugent.be> [100602 09:04]:
> Hi,
> 
> I am installing the Linux MFS and grub2 onto our testbed and am
> experiencing some issues.
> 
> I got grub2 working fine with PXE but it does not want to boot our
> default image.  The default image contains a Debian 5.0 with the older
> grub bootloader.  Grub2 boots the image with the chainloader, the
> "local" grub instance inside the image launches and boots its default
> kernel.  As soon as the kernel starts booting, (and starts probing EDD)
> it halts.  When booting the node directly from disk, bypassing the pxe
> grub, the kernel loads fine.
> 
> Passing edd=off on the kernel's commandline argument seems to fix this
> problem, but is there any another workaround known ?

I can't duplicate this using any images we have here, so it looks like
some combination of BIOS + kernel + Grub version that's causing this.
I'll need more specific information on your nodes and the kernel
version used in your image to make more progress.

Out of curiosity, have you tried edd=skipmbr?

> Grub2 also seems to have problems booting WinXP images :(

I tried booting a WinXP image with no success, so it looks like
something broke since the last time we tried to use a Windows image
with grub2.  I'll dig into this a bit more and see if I can figure out
what's going on.

> Another problem is with the Linux MFS IPOD.  It does not seem to like
> the packets send from our boss server:  "IPOD: from 10.0.174.1 rejected"

Actually, this one should be pretty easy to fix.  It looks like the
rc.ipod script isn't being run in your Linux MFS so all IPOD packets
are rejected.  We've already fixed that bug, but apparently you
downloaded the MFS before then.  You can get the latest version here:

http://www.emulab.net/images/linux_boot.tar.gz

You can disregard any grub-related stuff in there for now.  Just
extract the linux_mfs.tar.gz tarball inside your /tftpboot and you
should be set.