Re: debian on an NAS server

[Tom Brown <brown@esteem.com>]

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 14:46, Greg Folkert wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 09:29 -0800, Tom Brown wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > We aquired a powervault 715N NAS server. It is running some form of
> > windows (most likely w2k). I don't have the manuals or an install disk.
> > It doesn't have a floppy or a cdrom. I'd like to install debian on it and
> > make it a samba server for the company. All it has is a serial port, two
> > ethernet ports and four hard drives. Any ideas on how I'd get debian
> > installed on it?
>
> Does it send console to the Serial ports? Does it support PXE or Bootp
> style of net-booting?
>
> If it does, then all you need is a proper bootp and tftpd server for it
> to boot from the network.

Well, I made progress up to a point. It does have a serial port and the bios 
supports PXE. So, I copied files from:

ftp://cdimage.debian.org/pub/debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/20050317sarge1/images/netboot

onto my dhcp/tftp server. I setup my dhcp server like this:

host pxeinstall {
	hardware ethernet 00:c0:9f:06:f4:6d;
	filename "pxelinux.0";
}

Seems like it downloads something off the dhcp server because it spits out a 
bunch of text in a small column of which the first line contains the Debian 
copyright, Then it stops. If I hit a key it reboots. If I just wait it will 
reboot eventually on its own. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tom

PS: I also tried etch files from here:

ftp://cdimage.debian.org/pub/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-i386/rc1/images/netboot

Same scenario as above.