Loading Linux MCE 7.10 i386 32bit from CD

[speedyone]

  I'm going to load Linux MCE 7.10 i386 32 bit from the CD onto a fresh HDD. My question is, should have have my cable modem connected directly to the core machine while doing the install?

Thanks in advance!

Speedy

[tschak909]

Yes.

-Thom

[speedyone]

Thanks Thom....

My core is up and running and assigning DHCP addresses out to my network. I'm having trouble getting my diskless MD to LAN boot. It acts like it's going to boot and then finally stops with the last message as: "ETH0 - no link during initialization".

Any ideas on where to start? Is this an MD issue or a core issue?

Thx,
Speedy

[pigdog]

Hi speedyone,

Did you get the "We announce ourselves to the router" message?

I've seen this on my system but I just can't remember what it was right now.

If you got that router message check /usr/pluto/diskless to see if a MD was created (a number is assigned for the core/hybrid, MD, another MD etc.  i.e. 22, 31, 44).

If so, open webadmin and check the media director fields.

Cheers.

ps.

Now I remember.  It was because of the forcedeth Nvidia driver for the NIC.

Watch your screen on boot to see if forcedeth scrolls by.

If you've got a Linux liveCD boot it up on the MD and issue a lspci command to get your NIC card info.

You'll maybe need the lspci -n results as well depending on the route you might take.

You might want to look at the unrecognized NIC wiki.

There's a start.

[speedyone]

Hi Pigdog,

Thanks for the ideas. I'll check some of your questions out and let you know what I find. My MD is diskless, so I'm not sure I can use the linux live CD to issue a lspci command on my NIC card.

I can  accomplish this in my virtual Ubuntu OS on my windows machine where the card currently resides. When I can work on this, I've been taking the windows machine and trying to do a LAN boot from the NIC card in this machine.

My MD mother board doesn't support pxe booting and my windows MB does. So I've tried to ROM burn the NIC card to allow pxe booting and got stuck so far into the process....it got confusing to me.

My thought was if I could get the NIC card to LAN boot, then I could just swap the NIC card from the windows machine over to the MD machine and be good to go?? Maybe not.....


Here is my lspci results:

ooops...I don't know how to copy and paste from terminal in my virtual Ubuntu over to her. I'll type it out later.

Again, Thanks very much! 

[pigdog]

Hi speedyone,

If you have a dvd drive in your diskless MD you can still use the liveCD.

Having a dvd drive comes in handy if you want to use your MD as a DVD player for the TV you are hooked to.

Inorder to build a Rom-o-matic you need the information from the lspci and lspci -n commands.

The following link explains how I built a PXE floppy for a SIS chipset.

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7930.0

I recently had to build one for a Realtec ethernet card because the onboard Nvidia ethernet chip was NFG.

Just a question re: MD mobo?  What model is it?

Cheers.

[speedyone]

Hi Pigdog,

The MD motherboard is an Iwill KK266. I'll be back in touch.

Thx,

speedy

[pigdog]

Hi spedyone,

O.K.  I thought maybe it was possible that your mobo supported PXE booting.

Sometimes, depending upon the BIOS, you have to turn something on in another field before you can select PXE or network booting as an option in boot sequence.

Sometimes there is a legacy network boot and when PXE is turned on you can use another style of network boot (Nvidia boot rom, PXE boot, some other name).

However, since your mobo is vintage 2002 (approx.) I doubt whether it can PXE boot.

I could not find a manual (at least from a trusted source) to double check, but, you probably have.

From what I have read the manual is about 120 pages.

Thought I might save you some work from having to build a PXE or gPXE disk.

Cheers.

[speedyone]

Hi Pigdog,

Thanks for your thoughts and effort. The IWill MB does not support PXE booting.

My windows machine has an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and this board does support PXE booting. This is the machine that I literally move over to where my MD is, hook it up and am trying to get a LAN boot to this machine. It goes so far and then get stucks at "ETH0 - no link during initialization". 

I'll give some of your previous suggestions a try this weekend. I do have a DVD drive in the diskless IWill MD machine. So I may not be to far away from getting the MD up and running if I can successfully make a gPXE boot disk.

[pigdog]

Hi,

There's always http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC to check.

Cheers.