PXE Linux Pre-boot - Image Creation fails and reboots at 3:12 minutes (44% completion)
I have a HP BC2500 BladeSystem. One blade has Windows 2003 server, Altiris, DHCP, and PXE services installed. The other blades have Windows Vista. I am attempting to image one master blade, and will then deploy the image to the other blades.
The version I am using is "Deployment Console Version 6.9 (Build 164)".
The blades have two Broadcom network cards (VEN_14E4 DEV_1713). I am selecting all "tg3" drivers when building the PXE boot image.
Initially I downloaded the latest Linux Pre-boot image "BDCgpl_6.9.9020.frm", but ran into an unusual problem of "Skipping network config" and "rc.agent: warning: no express mount found!" during the PXE boot.
I found the previous version "BDCgpl_6.9.8853.frm", which we have successfully used in the labs for quite some time. This version got further and actually started imaging the drive (blue bar and all). At about 3:12 minutes into the imaging (about 44% completion) the system immediately rebooted. I have tried several more times, and the system consistently reboots at about the same place. The Deployment Console status for the job still says "Uploading disk image (as master)...; Time Remaining:4:01 (44% complete)". The estimated total time to complete was about 6-8 minutes, and the throughput was around 2000Mbps+.
I then gave up and tried to use the FreeDOS Pre-boot image, which did successfully complete the imaging process, but it averaged around 600Mbps, and took 25:10 minutes to complete.
If it weren't for the triple time to complete with the FreeDOS, I would just leave it at that. I would really like to get the Linux Pre-boot working.
Any ideas what might be causing the reboot?
When you were using the
When you were using the latest image, and went through the process of creating the PXE image are you sure you added the mapping properly. I'd retry that. You can also re-generate the images, which you seem to have to do after any update or even sometimes with different machines. Not sure why but I've bumped into that problem before.
I'm afraid I don't know why it's failing but It might be an idea to turn on the logs within the PXE menu on the deployment console and checking them after running it. There is a whole tab with different levels of logging you can play with. I hope that is helpful, I'm still learning the linux PXE. Seems it's a bit of a dark art till you can crack it.
Thanks for your reply. I
Thanks for your reply.
I assume that if I had the mapping incorrect, the image file would not even appear on the Altiris server. What portion was sent, is there though.
I have also tried re-generating the pre-boot images, but this did not appear to solve the problem.
I will try the debug logs, that is a great idea! thanks.
I am also wondering if this is a Vista issue. The system being imaged is Vista.
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