Has anyone succeeded with a Jumpstart install of an X4150, using the
ELOM serial console?  I have this working nicely with X4100 and X4200
servers.  On these, the default BIOS setting is to boot from the
internal disk, but I only have to type ^N at the BIOS screen to get
them to boot from the network to begin the installation.

With the X4150 and X4450 servers, the default seems to be to boot from
the network.  This works for the Jumpstart installation, but when the
server reboots it begins the installation over again.  This is
obviously unsuitable!

When I change the BIOS boot order to place the internal disk first,
the BIOS screen tells me to type F12 for a network boot.  Typing F12
on my Sun keyboard in a gnome-terminal does nothing at all.  Is there
some other way to get a network boot in this case?


-- 
-Gary Mills-    -Unix Support-    -U of M Academic Computing and Networking-

Gary Mills <mills@cc.umanitoba.ca> writes:

> Has anyone succeeded with a Jumpstart install of an X4150, using the
> ELOM serial console?

Yes.

> When I change the BIOS boot order to place the internal disk first,
> the BIOS screen tells me to type F12 for a network boot.  Typing F12
> on my Sun keyboard in a gnome-terminal does nothing at all.  Is there
> some other way to get a network boot in this case?
>

Use F3 not F12 - I found that F12 would just take you into the BIOS
setup, F3 gets you the boot menu (but from memory there's no feedback
when you hit F3).

-- 
Alex Kiernan, Principal Engineer, Development, THUS PLC

In <ulk3l7tjf.fsf@thus.net> Alex Kiernan <alex.kiernan@thus.net> writes:

>Gary Mills <mills@cc.umanitoba.ca> writes:

>> Has anyone succeeded with a Jumpstart install of an X4150, using the
>> ELOM serial console?

>> When I change the BIOS boot order to place the internal disk first,
>> the BIOS screen tells me to type F12 for a network boot.  Typing F12
>> on my Sun keyboard in a gnome-terminal does nothing at all.  Is there
>> some other way to get a network boot in this case?
>>

>Use F3 not F12 - I found that F12 would just take you into the BIOS
>setup, F3 gets you the boot menu (but from memory there's no feedback
>when you hit F3).

Ah, that's one I didn't suspect.  At least when I type F3 in a gnome-
terminal it sends `x1b O R'; the F12 key sends nothing.

I wound up using the VGA console, called `text', from the console
redirection feature of the web GUI, to do the install.  After that,
I was able to switch to the serial console.  This is tricky because
it uses ttyb at 115200 bps, whereas the AMD servers use ttya at
9600 bps.  I had to modify /etc/ttydefs during the Jumpstart install
to get the serial console to work.  The GRUB menu on the local disk
also needs modification at that time to specify the console correctly.

-- 
-Gary Mills-    -Unix Support-    -U of M Academic Computing and Networking-