[Beowulf] BIOS

[jason bishop]

On Aug 11, 2007, at 8:44 PM, Robert G. Brown wrote:

>
> Sure.  You can PXE-boot DOS (which doesn't need to fit on a floppy  
> sized
> image, actually).  Last time I looked, there were some bootable DOS
> images freely available on the net -- google turns up e.g.
>
>   http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
>
> pretty readily.  So create a PXE bootable remote-mountable  
> partition and
> pop the BIOS flash program on that, and write a suitable autoexec.bat.
> Terminate the image in the batch file with the mandatory reboot,  
> and set
> up suitable DHCP toggles so that you start the flash by hand, then it
> defaults to a kickstart install, then it defaults to a local disk  
> boot,
> in that order.

I've had good luck with a slight variation on this.  using a 32bit  
linux install, fire up dosemu with a pseudo hard drive set to a  
file.  fdisk it, format it, sys it and copy everything you will need  
to it.  shut down dosemu and gzip the file.   you can then drop the  
file into your tftpboot dir and pxe boot machines from it.

jason