Re: debian on an NAS server

[Tom Brown <brown@esteem.com>]

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 19:18, Tom Brown wrote:
> 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-i386/2005031
>7sarge1/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/imag
>es/netboot
>
> Same scenario as above.

I found the following string in the pxelinux.0 file:
"Boot failed: press a key to retry, or wait for reset..."

So, I know it has downloaded pxelinux.0 and is trying to boot the kernel. Any 
ideas on where I can go from here would be appreciated.

Thank you!
Tom