Re: [Etherboot-discuss] Boot from san questions

[Michael B. <mb...@fe...>]

On Sunday 24 August 2008 23:05:11 Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> >The boot sector doesn't need to be totally blank; as long as the disk is
> >unbootable (even if this means "has a valid MBR but no active partition"),
> >then it should still work.
> I wonder if the bios has a role in this behavior? I swore that was the case
> but it stopped at attempting to boot from the san instead of continuing to
> the dvd. I am off to verify this (test machine is currently benching a
> CentOS install now).

The BIOS isn't involved; gPXE loads and executes the SAN disk bootsector 
itself, rather than relying on the BIOS to do so.

> I have a message stuck waiting for a moderator, so forgive me for taking
> advantage of this working thread to ask a slightly related question. While
> I am experimenting with this as I have a virt project underway I am testing
> various approaches, I have CentOS 5.2 installing to a san seamlessly as it
> appears the bugs in anaconda are resolved. This is good as that and Windows
> are my two priorities.
>
> I still can't get Fedora 9 to install. I presume unless you actually
> "click" the advanced storage button the installer doesn't generate a
> correct initrd to support booting from san. Can you point me along to
> getting fc9 booting?

We didn't manage to get Fedora 9 installing direct to iSCSI during the two 
hours we spent playing with it.  The instructions on the wiki will work for 
Fedora 8, but not 9.  (It seems as though each minor revision of anaconda 
introduces slightly different iSCSI-related bugs, and none that I have used 
have worked without manual workarounds.)

Michael