C H A P T E R 9 |
Troubleshooting the Linux PXE Boot Installation |
This appendix provides information on common problems that may occur during or after a PXE boot installation.
The following errors appear at startup when PXE booting the blade:
The DHCP service is not configured correctly.
To ensure that the DHCP service is running on the DHCP server and monitoring the correct port, use the following netstat command:
If no listening socket is shown, check your DHCP setup and configuration. If a listening socket is shown, this may indicate another problem such as firewall filtering or cabling issues.
During a PXE boot installation, the following errors appear after obtaining the IP address:
The DHCP service did not provide the name of a boot file.
Ensure that the filename command is correctly specified in the /etc/dhcpd.conf file on the PXE server.
This problem may also occur if the DHCP lease is received from a different machine. Normally, only one DHCP server should be configured on a single network segment.
During a PXE boot installation, the following errors appear after obtaining the IP number:
The TFTP service is not configured correctly.
To ensure that the TFTP service is running and monitoring the correct port, use the following netstat command:
If no listening socket is shown, check your TFTP setup and configuration. If a listening socket is shown, this may indicate another problem such as firewall filtering or cabling issues.
To test the TFTP service, try installing a TFTP client on a different machine and attempt to download the pxelinux.bin file:
# cd /tmp # tftp PXE-server tftp> get /as-2.1/sun/pxelinux.bin Received 10960 bytes in 0.1 seconds tftp> quit |
During a PXE boot installation, the following errors appear after obtaining the IP address:
The boot file name does not exist on the PXE server.
In the /etc/xinetd.d/tftp file on the PXE server:
It is recommended that you use -s /tftp, and ensure that the TFTP service uses chroot(1) to change its top level directory to /tftp. This means that the dhcp filename argument is relative to the top level directory (and does not include the section /tftp).
To test the TFTP service, try installing a TFTP client on a different machine and attempt to download a file:
# cd /tmp # tftp PXE-server tftp> get /as-2.1/sun/pxelinux.bin Received 10960 bytes in 0.1 seconds tftp> quit |
During a PXE boot installation, the following error appears after loading the Linux kernel:
------+ Kickstart Error +-------+ | | | Error opening: kickstart file | | /tmp/ks.cfg: No such file or | | directory | | | | +----+ | | | OK | | | +----+ | | | | | +--------------------------------+ |
NFS is not working correctly on the PXE server.
Validate your NFS configuration by doing one or both of the following:
If this path is not in the output, check your NFS setup and configuration.
This problem may also occur if the blade is not correctly connected to the PXE server. If you have only one switch and system controller (SSC) installed on the chassis, ensure that the SSC is installed in position 0. See the Sun Fire B1600 Chassis Administration Guide for information on installing the SSC.
If the NFS services are working normally and can be used from other machines on the network, it is likely that the PXE server has provided the wrong kernel to the blade. This occurs if the linux distribution installed on the PXE server does not exactly match the linux distribution against which the supplemental CD (supplied with the Linux blade) was built. An exact match is necessary to ensure that module versioning does not cause the 5704 network driver (suntg3) to fail to load.
During a PXE boot installation, the following message appears after loading the Linux kernel:
No default root password has been specified in ks.cfg.
In the sun/install/ks.cfg file, ensure that the rootpw command is not commented out, and that you have specified a root password. See Chapter 4 for information on entering a root password.
After completing a PXE boot installation and rebooting, the following screen appears:
The PXE boot installation did not complete.
This problem may occur if the blade is removed or powered off during installation. You must re-install the blade.
After successfully completing a PXE boot installation, the blade continues to boot from the network instead of the disk.
The BIOS is configured to boot from the network by default.
At the SC prompt, use the bootmode reset_nvram sn command to reset the BIOS to boot from the disk by default.
When booting the blade from the disk for the first time, the blade runs fsck to fix filesystems.
The blade has not unmounted fileystems.
To unmount all file systems and enable the blade to reboot correctly, ensure that you press Enter at the final OK prompt during the PXE boot installation. See Chapter 4 for more information.
When PXE installing a blade, the installer does one of the following:
The PXE server may be using the eepro100 driver.
1. Check if the PXE server is using the eepro100 driver by examining the /etc/modules.conf file for a line equivalent to:
Note - The eth instance may be different depending on your hardware setup. |
This avoids a known interaction issue between the i82557/i82558 10/100 Ethernet hardware and the Broadcom 5704.
When booting a blade during a SuSE installation, the blade does not boot automatically and you are prompted to perform an interactive installation:
You'll find instructions on how to create it in boot/README on CD1 or DVD.
SuSE expects a default router to be supplied by the DHCP server, otherwise it assumes that the interface is not functional.
Ensure thst you have specified a default router in the dhcpd.conf file. For example:
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