How to leave 3c905B and Intel Pro/1000 NICs in WOL mode without entering BIOS?

[Erwan Velu]

Le ven 07/02/2003 à 20:38, Shanwu Wang a écrit :
> I want to remote-wake-up our cluster. It works if I enter the BIOS, set WOL
> on, and wake it with ether-wake of Donald.  However, there are several
> hundreds nodes and I really want to avoid connecting keyboard and mornitor
> one by one.  Do you have any better solution?  Our nodes are from Dell and
> NICs include 3c905s and Intel Pro/1000.  Thanks a lot,
A bios contains a data segment which is not writen by bios update but
some version of bios flash programs are able to read/write the data
segment.
A solution could be (only if your nodes uses the same motherboard):

- ask dell for a bios flash program which read/write the data segment,
- build a dos/freedos boot disk which includes the bios 
- boot on it,
- read the bios and save it on the boot disk.
- Write a valid autoexec.bat file which flash the motherboard using the
saved bios.
- Store this image on a valid tftp/pxe server using dd command
- Boot this dos/freedos image using PXE on your nodes.
- Pray :-)

This method works fine for Ethernet ROM updates and should works with
your bios.

!!! Be sure that all the motherboards are the same !!!

This is the only solution i know for managing bios updates without
keyboard/monitor.
-- 
Erwan Velu
Linux Cluster Distribution Project Manager
MandrakeSoft
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