On Thu, 9 Aug 2007, Henning Fehrmann wrote:
Hello,
we are interested in flashing a BIOS image and in manipulating the NVRAM of the
motherboard
automatically.
Unfortunately, using certain vendors, the access to the NVRAM is not
straightforward.
These vendors are offering DOS tools only, to write in the NVRAM, hence, we
have to boot
a DOS image and here starts the trouble.
Optimally, using the DOS environment does following things:
* flashes the BIOS
* sets the NVRAM
* sends a message to the install server
The last point is necessary to prepare pxeboot for the installation process.
It also means, we need networking under DOS.
In particular, we are looking for a DOS-DHCP client. Everything needs to be
packed on
a 2,9M floppy image.
Has somebody experiences with this?
Sure. You can PXE-boot DOS (which doesn't need to fit on a floppy sized
image, actually). Last time I looked, there were some bootable DOS
images freely available on the net -- google turns up e.g.
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
pretty readily. So create a PXE bootable remote-mountable partition and
pop the BIOS flash program on that, and write a suitable autoexec.bat.
Terminate the image in the batch file with the mandatory reboot, and set
up suitable DHCP toggles so that you start the flash by hand, then it
defaults to a kickstart install, then it defaults to a local disk boot,
in that order.
In the worst case, the DOS environment is working autonomously and the install
server is 'guessing'
whether the BIOS is flashed or not on the clients,
e.g., by analyzing the DHCP logs, but this is not what we really want.
I'm hoping that the process described above IS what you want.
rgb
Regards
Henning Fehrmann
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--
Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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