Re: Fwd: Re: [suse-autoinstall] wake on lan

On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 13:21 +0100, Yan Fitterer wrote:

Maybe safer:

dd of=/dev/sda if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=1

As far as I know, the core part of the MBR is only 512 bytes. There _is_ some free space afterwards (not sure how much), where things like GRUB can store some of their boot code.

BTW - you _will_ destroy the partion table with this. The partitions shouldn't be touched though, so if you wanted (?) you could re-create them manually as long as you know the exact layout.

Where would you envision the dd command be run from in the client? The problem I see is that you do not know what is there, so you do not want blindly to reinstall. I do not think you can/should trust the client to change settings as needs change. If the system requires a install/reinstall, it must surely be specifically enabled, and then disabled when complete. The reason I was thinking of wake-on-lan is that, AFAIK, it is an action that only happens from a remote (install server). A client never initiates it as, by definition, the client is off when it happens. Later PXE boots will not cause a reinstall because they are never configured to serve an installation. Am I thinking correctly?

Yan

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On 14/02/2006 at 12:14:24, in message <43F1C9A0.9040409@opencfd.co.uk>, Mattijs Janssens wrote: You set up the machine to boot from harddisk first and then lan.

So initially it will not have an mbr and install from lan. Afterwards it will pick up the harddisk installation.

If you need to reinstall just(!) wipe the MBR:

dd of=/dev/sda if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=1

(no guarantees on that one - don't complain if you wipe your whole disk)

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

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Has anyone done a network install of SUSE when the client is started with wake-on-lan? Is this even possible?

The reason I ask is I am unsure how you disable a machine from being installed each time it boots. Do you have to turn on/off PXE (or whatever you're using) in the BIOS when you want to change behavior? Or modify the dhcp server's setup? I guess either would work. What are people doing in practice?

-- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems AB Ramböll Sverige AB Kapellgränd 7 P.O. Box 4205 SE-102 65 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: Int +46 8-615 60 20 Fax: Int +46 8-31 42 23