strategies for changing boot order

[Ben Fitzgerald]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 10:49:28AM -0800, Alan Horn wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I know that some of this is going to be fairly hardware specific, but what 
> strategies do folks use for flipping boot order back to the primary 
> ide/scsi system disk after doing a pxeboot install ?
> 
> The way I do it right now is :
> 
>  o Initially enable pxeboot in the bios (if not set)
>  o Reboot box, go back into bios, set boot order to NIC pxeboot before HDD
>  o Unattended kickstart install
>  o Catch install after final reboot and jump into bios to reset boot 
>    order.
> 
> Obviously I'd like to do away with the last step to make it truly 
> unattended after the setup phase.

short term solution:
couldn't you just remove the boot config file from your tftp server during
the build and have it boot from a default that tells the newly built box
to boot from it's hard drive? I once saw a howto that included having a
simple perl script listen on a high port for connects from clients to
let the listener know when they finish building. The listener then alters
the device's file under /tftp/pxelinux.cfg so that on reboot it boots
off the local disk (although it gets this config from pxe).
sorry - can't find the link to this paper any more. :( in any case it
shouldn't be difficult to implement.

long term problem:
unless you have an interface into the bios via some sort of system call you
can't change your pxe boot setting without rebooting the box down, AFAIK.
otherwise even with the above short term fix, you end up booting off pxe
(even if that simple then boots off the local HDD), which wouldn't be good.

Ben

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