Hardware

Does anyone know how to get a v60 to perform a "network boot" via the LOM facility? The only way I can get a remote machine to network boot (in order to kickstart the machine) is to power cycle via the LOM, re-direct the console over the lan and try and insert an "F12" down the pipe during the brief window of opportunity during the post. The problem with this approach, apart from requiring an inter-active session (as opposed to a nice reliable script), is that the remote link has timing latencies that makes synchronising the local <CTRL><SHIFT><2> key sequence with the remote POST opportunity a hit-and-miss affair. Very frustrating and unreliable.

I've played around with the ipmitool utility to set the pxe bootdevice flag (ipmitool -I lan .......chassis bootdev pxe ) but when the machine is power cycled the boot up sequence is always dictated by the static BIOS settings and not by the one-off setting of the IPMI bootflags as specified in the IPMI 1.5 spec. I've read back the appropriate boot parameter (ipmitool .....chassis bootparam get 5) which shows the right flag being set as well as the global "boot flag valid" flag. When the machine boots the "boot flag valid" flag is reset, presumably by the BIOS, as per the 1.5 spec but the BIOS otherwise appears to ignore the actual bootflags.

I'm assuming this is a problem with the BIOS (version 1236) and not the BMC (versions 1.19 (from the Sun website) and 1.2 (from Intel website)).

Does anyone have any other ideas?