Although I have not fully recovered the unit (yet), I think I have established
the issues involved. These will be important to others, so here is a quick
summary.
What I have done.
Serial port was NOT behaving, but I managed to telnet into port 9000 during
boot up, using the default IP address. Loaded Thecus default firmware, then
upgraded to Debian Installer firmware. At some point in the process the IP
address reverted to the configured IP address, but the serial port now works
every time (correct line voltage on pin 3, and data). D-I is not working, but
I think I have a DNS issue that is related to the original problem (see below).
What I was doing before the problem.
I am currently setting up an IPv6 only network, and have been manually bringing
up the second ethernet port, restarting networking as required, but NOT
re-booting the machine. Due to some DNS problems I decided a complete re-boot
would be sesible :-)
What I suspect.
Examining the /etc/network/interfaces file from Debian installer, I see a file
that looks suspiciously like the one I edited, but truncated. Further the
disks have not been recognised yet, so it MUST be coming from flash memory.
Therefore there are clearly TWO interfaces files, one on disk and one in flash.
IT IS MY ASSUMPTION that my previous edits on disk, with a soft restart
worked, but the re-boot resulted in the flash verison becoming involved in some
way. I further suspect the version in flash may be size limited, and the
firmware makes assumptions about its content. I.E. Valid interfaces files are
NOT necessarily valid for booting from flash.
What I'm assuming.
The interfaces file has to conform to what the firmware expects, it cannot
necesarily be a vaild interfaces file.
There are effectively two interfaces files, flash & disk versions.
My Conclusions.
I will bring up IPv6 (inet6) in a separate script
This is going to start affecting a lot of people, real soon.
Editing interfaces files on embedded systems, may not be firmware friendly,
I.E. how was it setup initially?
If anyone has any suggestions on taking down IPv4 to guarantee no IPv4 traffic,
email me OFF LIST.
Any comments?
John.
