MSI WIND PC, has anybody tried this yet??

[colinjones]

Good news Jean, glad it helped... thx for updating the wiki because I'm certain I will not be able to reproduce this again when i come to rebuild... in the meantime, per my PM to you, my Wind PC no longer PXE boots. It gets an IP and appears to start the boot, but then immediately fails out of the PXE boot code and says that there isn't any boot media, insert boot media and restart... no idea what changed.... damn!

[colinjones]

Fixed, it seems!

I tried double checking that the tftp was working fine by installing a tftp client on my PC and trying to pull down the file that the PXE ROM is trying to access before it exists (without any error). This is the initial config file that points to the linuz ramdisk image:

DEFAULT Pluto
LABEL Pluto
LOCALBOOT 0 KERNEL 56/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=56/initrd.img ramdisk=10240 rw root=/dev/nfs boot=nfs nfsroot=192.168.80.1:/usr/pluto/diskless/56

I noticed that on the third line "KERNEL" was actually "#ERNEL" - I have certainly never edited this file, and it seemed strange is it looked clear it was really supposed to be KERNEL. So I edited it, and bingo, now it all works again! Guess it must have gotten corrupted... but just one character...

Anyway, as I have noted before in various posts, the actual DHCP component of the boot seems to vary between getting an IP almost instantly, and it taking at least 60 seconds before the PXE boot can continue... In the past, when battling the driver issue, whenever it booted fast, I seemed to end up with driver problems later in the boot sequence. When it took 60 seconds seemed to be a good omen

Ever since this most recent problem occurred, it has been getting the IP instantly, but then bombing out of the PXE ROM and looking for a HDD. As soon as I changed the # to K and rebooted, it takes 60 seconds again, but works. The thing is, at the point it is getting the IP address, it is still in the PXE with no software downloaded, no part of LMCE even touched, much less this config file above, so I don't see how it can influence how quickly it gets an IP address. My networking tells me it can't.... oh well, one more mystery

[colinjones]

Curiouser and curiouser! It was definitely the # that was screwing things up, but after a little while the MD stopped booting again. So I checked the same file again, and there it was, back again! No idea what put it back. So I edited it again and rebooted the MD, and it works again!

Anyone any idea why this is happening? Or what might be doing it, as it will be very inconvenient if I have to edit a text file everytime I want to reboot

[Zaerc]

Curiouser and curiouser! It was definitely the # that was screwing things up, but after a little while the MD stopped booting again. So I checked the same file again, and there it was, back again! No idea what put it back. So I edited it again and rebooted the MD, and it works again!

Anyone any idea why this is happening? Or what might be doing it, as it will be very inconvenient if I have to edit a text file everytime I want to reboot

Try going to the web-admin's restart page and click the "Net" checkbox (under "boot from") for that particular Media Director.  I think what you're seeing is that it is trying to boot locally (from the Hdd) which only works if there actually is a native OS installed.

[jeangot]

Colin,

the same thing happened to me once on a different MD after a reboot of the Core I believe. Now with Zaerc's comment,it could be that I simply mistakently did something to tell the MD to boot from the disk on reboot...

Jean

[colinjones]

That's entirely possible, I will look into it shortly. Zaerc - does the # in place of K in KERNEL in that file mean anything to you? Seems a bit random, but it definitely got re-written after I modified it....

[Zaerc]

That's entirely possible, I will look into it shortly. Zaerc - does the # in place of K in KERNEL in that file mean anything to you? Seems a bit random, but it definitely got re-written after I modified it....

When I looked I saw the same thing in one of the config files too, I think it is intentional and used to boot the the system with its locally installed OS instead of netbooting it.

[colinjones]

Strange way of doing it... cause an error in the net boot so that it fails through!

I definitely didn't accidentally choose boot from HDD before rebooting as I didn't even use that interface to reboot the box. And when I look now, it doesn't indicate which it will use if I hit reboot (both radio buttons are empty), perhaps that was the default for the first time. And I note that the # has not subsequently come back again... so I guess keep monitoring it for a while, or perhaps even deliberately choose "from HDD" to see if the # reappears, then report back again...

Col.

[jeangot]

To Andrew:

I am experiencing some stuttering when watching high definition TV content in MythTV on my MSI Wind PC (depending on how much movement there is, some programs are fine, but with lots of movement it stutters every few seconds).

So I wanted to try to upgrade the intel video driver which is version 2.1.1 by default on my MD since you said that results vary by driver version. I haven't had much success though. I could find plenty of packages or sources for newer version, but they all want a newer xorg to be installed, and dozens of other packages depend on xorg etc...
I even tried to upgrade this MD to Ubuntu 8.10 via "apt-get dist-upgrade" which, as expected, trashed the whole box.

So is there an easy way to update this video driver, or am I better off to wait for LMCE 810 which is hopefully around the corner?

Jean

[totallymaxed]

To Andrew:

I am experiencing some stuttering when watching high definition TV content in MythTV on my MSI Wind PC (depending on how much movement there is, some programs are fine, but with lots of movement it stutters every few seconds).

So I wanted to try to upgrade the intel video driver which is version 2.1.1 by default on my MD since you said that results vary by driver version. I haven't had much success though. I could find plenty of packages or sources for newer version, but they all want a newer xorg to be installed, and dozens of other packages depend on xorg etc...
I even tried to upgrade this MD to Ubuntu 8.10 via "apt-get dist-upgrade" which, as expected, trashed the whole box.

So is there an easy way to update this video driver, or am I better off to wait for LMCE 810 which is hopefully around the corner?

Jean

Hi,

Well depending on what type of 'HD' content you are trying to play you will see different results. The MSI Wind PC uses the GMA950 GPU which does not have any support in hardware for accelerating playback/decoding of h.264 content so if that is the type of content you are trying to playback then I am afraid no matter what driver upgrades you apply you will not see any significant performance improvements. On the MSI Wind PC you might get away with 720p h.264 content...but I very much doubt it (we have not tested your hardware so I am only extrapolating the performance we see on other similar hardware).

If the 'HD' content you are trying to play is mpeg2 encoded then you may be more fortunate as the GMA950 copes better with this.

All the best

Andrew

[jeangot]

Andrew,

yes the content I'm trying to play is Mpeg2, recorded in Myth TV. H264 I will try after Mpeg2 works decently.

The question is: how do I uprade the intel video driver? As explained above, I was unsuccessfull doing so either using the sources or with a package, as in both cases, it was requiring a more recent xorg version.

Jean

[schaferj]

When "MD no longer PXE boots"

It can be fixed by clicking on the "setup diskless MD" button which is at the bottom of the web admin / media directors page.

joseph

[totallymaxed]

When "MD no longer PXE boots"

It can be fixed by clicking on the "setup diskless MD" button which is at the bottom of the web admin / media directors page.

joseph

I would not recommend using 'Setup Diskless' at all as this is a hangover from before MD's would PnP. Use the 'Rebuild Image' button on the right hand side of the page for the MD in question - this will give you a 'fresh' boot image for the MD (as if you had just added using PnP).

Andrew

[schaferj]

Andrew,
Thanks.  I understand it's a legacy button.  I've found in hte past that when things get messed up and the MD no longer starts, hitting that button often clears it up.  And I've used that for a quick fix when I didn't want to devote time to finding the route cause.

I believe the setup diskless script calls the build image script.  Is that right?

thanks,
joseph

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,
Thanks.  I understand it's a legacy button.  I've found in hte past that when things get messed up and the MD no longer starts, hitting that button often clears it up.  And I've used that for a quick fix when I didn't want to devote time to finding the route cause.

I believe the setup diskless script calls the build image script.  Is that right?

thanks,
joseph

Yes. but is is broken and you will get some broken functionality. Rebuild Image is the better option or just delete the MD and re discover it.

Andrew