PXE Boot the Dell Diagnostics

• http://syslinux.zytor.com/archives/2006-October/007555.html
• http://www.rocksclusters.org/roll-documentation/base/4.3/x167.html
• http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=A9E3A15597A04AFBB02EE16785D39C5C&c=us&l=en&s=dhs

Get Diagnostics Package

It seems that this process might be a bit easier to do on Windows (download the .exe file), as you won't have the end-of-line issues with the script file, but I don't have a Windows box handy... Note that an actual bootable image file is not included in the package, but can be created from the package, so you need a machine with the proper OS to run the package on to create the image (what the heck were they thinking?!?).

ftp://ftp.dell.com/diags package Dell_32-Bit-Diagnostics_5103-1_R176884.exe

Run the "installer" to create the bootable image. Put the image where it can be served by the TFTP server.

MEMDISK

To boot the image, we will use the memdisk kernel that is included in the syslinux pxeboot package. It is at /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk Copy it to the root of the tftpboot area.

Adding to ROCKS

http://www.rocksclusters.org/roll-documentation/base/4.3/x167.html

I didn't get the hostname wildcard "%" described in the documentation to work. Leave hostname of the pxeaction command to set it for all hosts.

bash-3.00# rocks add host pxeaction action='delldiag32' command='kernel memdisk' args='append initrd=dell/diag32' 
bash-3.00# rocks set host pxeboot c-102-4 action='delldiag32'

Monitor remotely

If you enable console redirection after boot, the diagnostic is usable via SOL. Not sure about settings for pxelinux that might make SOL work without resorting to CRAB.

Open Package

=== root@cap /tmp > losetup /dev/loop0 diags-5103.img 
=== root@cap /tmp > fdisk -l /dev/loop0

Disk /dev/loop0: 4 MB, 4644864 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/loop0p1   *           1           9        4504+   4  FAT16 <32M

=== root@cap /tmp > losetup -o 32256 /dev/loop0 diags-5103.img 
=== root@cap /tmp > mount /dev/loop0 -o loop -t msdos mntpnt/

"magic" offset value is 512*63=32256

-- TomRockwell - 24 Apr 2008