Altiris PXE Boot

[SanderL]

Hi All,

We have just receive our FIT-PC2 and enabled the PXE boot in the bios.
But when we boot we get a PXE-E53: No boot filename received. We deploy 1000+ of differend PCs with altiris and this machine will not start?

We have a DHCP server, altiris server and we configured IP helpers. This works voor 1000+ PC's except this one.

We tried to update the bios to the latest version but the PXE problem stays the same.

Any ideas?

Sander,

[irads]

We have not tested Altiris. We tested successfully PXE from a Linux server.
I tend to believe it can be configured on the server side. From googling I found http://altirisbe.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

[SanderL]

Thanks for your reply but this option is for automatic deploy of images if the machine does not exists in the deployment console.

The strange thing is (forgot to mention ) that we don't receive a IP address. I see the client MAC address and GUID. Right after that; PXE-E53: No boot filename received.

If I add the settings on my DHCP server, 066 and 067. Then I see the IP address but it still misses the boot filename.

Thanks for your help.

Sander,

[kryger]

I experience the exact same issue as SanderL, however I don't use Altiris but WDS as the PXE boot server. I've succesfully PXE booted several different machines with WDS, but the FitPC2 refuses, and I get the same error msgs as SanderL.

BIOS is updated to latest version.

Cheers,
Kryger

[yawarra_paul]

Hi All,

We have finally solved this problem, so I thought I'd post the solution here for anyone else who might be searching for a mass deployment solution using fit-PC2 and Altiris DS (or something like it).

The first part of the solution is to use the May 12, 2010 (or later) BIOS update from Compulab. This allows the fit-PC2 to PXE boot from the Altiris deployment server and have an O/S installed.

Get it here: http://www.fit-pc2.com/wiki/index.php/BIOS_ROM_Files

However, that isn't the end of it. At this stage, the fit-PC2 will show up in the deployment console with an identifier of "Not Applicable".

Serial Number "Not Applicable" - Altiris DS

NotApplicable.jpg (4.64 KiB) Viewed 12952 times

If you only have one fit-PC2 on your network this might work, but since that's not likely, you'll need something a little more unique.

After much searching of network traffic captures, we discovered a that this string comes from the DMI strings in the fit-PC2 BIOS, and in particular is one of the serial numbers (the system serial number), intended to be unique.

Along the way we also discovered that by default, the UUID in the BIOS isn't unique either, but is set to 0101010101...01.

The solution to both of these issues is to use the SFlash16.exe utility available with the BIOS updates to set these to unique values.

For the UUID, this is done by booting into DOS using the image supplied by Compulab, and typing:

Code: Select all

SFLASH16 /UUID DEVEL34X.ROM

where DEVEL34X.ROM is the name of the .ROM file you got from Compulab. (make sure it is dated May, 2010 or later, and if you have 2GB, use the other version in the zip)

This will install the new BIOS and generate a new UUID, which is unique, into the fit-PC2 BIOS.

To set the serial number in the DMI strings, you run SFlash16 again, but this time with different switches.

Code: Select all

SFLASH16 /DSS:Sbc00002032 /MODE=1 DEVEL34X.ROM

where "Sbc00002032" is any string (up to 25 chars) that you would like to set as the system serial number.

After it completes, you will get this in Altiris instead:

Altiris DS with new serial number

Altiris_serial.jpg (12.29 KiB) Viewed 12952 times

It should be possible to do both steps at the same time by typing

Code: Select all

SFLASH16 /UUID /DSS:1234567890 /MODE=3 DEVEL34X.ROM

but I haven't tried that so I don't know for sure what the effect would be.

Best regards,

Paul McGowan
Yawarra Information Appliances
http://www.yawarra.com.au