42 replies to this topic

[deaks]

Hi there

 

Im new to Debian and Ive made a PXE boot server for software that I use most of the time. 

 

Im using pxelinux and memdisk to boot software via network, most of the software I use works but Im having trouble getting PC Check to boot from pxe.  I have search the internet for hours and hours trying different thing but nothing is working.

 

If there is someone who has got a spare 5 minutest to help me out it would be greatly appreciated.

 

If you need more information...please let me know.

 

 

 

 

[Sha0]

If you need more information...please let me know.

Hello.  I need more information:

• Is this product something that can be downloaded from somewhere, so someone trying to help can try to reproduce the problem?
• Can you please include some observations instead of the conclusion "nothing is working"?  Someone trying to help has a better chance of recognizing an observation instead of that conclusion.

[andriusst]

Hi, also what is PCcheck version and image format (floppy, iso or hdd) you pass to memdisk?

[deaks]

Hi

 

PC Check 7.03 is made by Eurosoft and it use's eurodos

 

I have PC Check on floppy, CD and iso file, I have taken an image from the cd using Debian

 

I have put my code from the pxelinux.cfg/default below.  I have tried different ways which I found on the net but none of them works with this software

 

LABEL PC Check

MENU LABEL PC Check

LINUX memdisk

INITRD /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img

APPEND raw

 

All I got with the above was a flash of a text then went on to a blank screen with a flashing cursor at the bottom

 

LABEL PC Check

MENU LABEL PC Check

LINUX memdisk

INITRD /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.iso

APPEND iso

 

All I got from above was "MEMDISK: Image seems to have fractional end cyclinders"

 

I have tried the files without the .iso and .img extensions and still have the same results

 

Thank you again for your time

 

 

 

LABEL PC Check

MENU

[Sha0]

PC Check 7.03 is made by Eurosoft and it use's eurodos

I'll take that to mean that it cannot be downloaded freely.  If it was, you would have shared a link, right?

 

I have PC Check on floppy, CD and iso file, I have taken an image from the cd using Debian

 

I have put my code from the pxelinux.cfg/default below.

Thank you.  It is useful to see this.

 

I have tried different ways which I found on the net but none of them works with this software

 

LABEL PC Check

MENU LABEL PC Check

LINUX memdisk

INITRD /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img

APPEND raw

 

All I got with the above was a flash of a text then went on to a blank screen with a flashing cursor at the bottom

Thank you for sharing this observation.

 

LABEL PC Check

MENU LABEL PC Check

LINUX memdisk

INITRD /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.iso

APPEND iso

 

All I got from above was "MEMDISK: Image seems to have fractional end cyclinders"

Thank you for sharing this observation.  What version of MEMDISK are you using?

 

I have tried the files without the .iso and .img extensions and still have the same results

How about sharing all of the output of:

# Please do not use spaces in LABELs
LABEL pcchk
  # Menu labels are ok to have spaces
  MENU LABEL PC Check
  LINUX memdisk
  INITRD /PCCheck7.img
  APPEND raw pause

[deaks]

Hi Sha0

 

I tried what you said and I have attached a pic of what happened.

 

 

Hope this helps

 

Regards

[Sha0]

I tried what you said and I have attached a pic of what happened.

 

20130113_195758.jpg

 

Hope this helps

We can see that the image is not a standard floppy disk image.  Did they document which program is supposed to be used to make a physical floppy disk from the image?  Whatever program is supposed to be used must understand this image format.  It might be as simple as padding the image with zeroes to a standard floppy disk size.

[deaks]

I have a floppy disk with PC Check, the files that are on the floppy are in the pic below

 

 PCC.bmp   740.17KB   1555 downloads

 

Im new with Linux (debian) command line, Ive tried creating an image for the floppy but Im using an external floppy drive and for some reason I cant get the cp command to find the floppy drive.

 

Ive also tried using MagicISO to make an image of the floppy ".ima file" but that didnt work either.  I got an error saying windows boot loader could not run.

 

 

[Sha0]

I have a floppy disk with PC Check, the files that are on the floppy are in the pic below

 

PCC.bmp

 

Im new with Linux (debian) command line, Ive tried creating an image for the floppy but Im using an external floppy drive and for some reason I cant get the cp command to find the floppy drive.

 

Ive also tried using MagicISO to make an image of the floppy ".ima file" but that didnt work either.  I got an error saying windows boot loader could not run.

Aha.  This should explain it.  Use mount to find out which /dev/device is the device for the floppy disk.  Once you know, then do:

dd if=/dev/device of=~/pccheck.vfd

and wait for the process to finish copying the disk to the image file.

[deaks]

Hi Sha0

 

Thank you for getting back to me.  I have created the pccheck.vfd and I was wondering is there a special APPEND that is need for a .vfd file because Ive never used one before.

 

ie. for an .img file its APPEND raw

 

LABEL PCCheck

MENU LABEL PC Check

LINUX memdisk

INITRD /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img

APPEND raw

 

Thank you again for all your help with this

[Wonko the Sane]

@deaks

.vfd is just an extension.

If the format of the file is RAW (a dd-like copy of a floppy) you can change it's extension to whatever you like, only file association (in windows) will be affected.

A common "standard" or, better, "convention" is to use:

• .ima for floppy or superfloppy images
• .img for hard disk (partitioned) images

but, just like .vfd (which is shorthand for virtual floppy drive) they are just "mnemonics" to know what the file is without opening/inspecting it.

 

Please note that EuroDOS is a "peculiar" from of DOS, particularly "resilient" to booting attempts  with external loaders.

A reported working approach has been detailed using grub4dos (but seemingly NOT memdisk/syslinux/isolinux - and consequently pxelinux)

http://reboot.pro/to...4dos-chainload/

 

 

Wonko

[deaks]

Cheers Wonko

 

Im going to see if I can find a tutorial on grub4dos and chainloading that I understand.

 

 

Deaks

[Wonko the Sane]

Cheers Wonko
 
Im going to see if I can find a tutorial on grub4dos and chainloading that I understand.
 

 
Deaks

 
Why not trying to solve the issue at hand?
 
I mean, FORGET (temporarily) about PXE booting and try a "local" image.
 
The screenshot you posted is about memdisk trying to tell you (desperately) how it "sees" that image as being 1828K in size, with a geometry (absurd) of 121/2/15.
 
The other mentioned thread demonstrates how grub4dos detects the image as that of a 2880 Kb  floppy.
Such a floppy image would be:

• EXACTLY 2949120 bytes in size
• with a geometry of 80/2/36

 
can you verify these DATA about your image?
 
 
In SYSLINUX (yes, try a "local" setting, you can use Qemu - optionally through Qemu Manager - as a testing Vurtual platform) load grub.exe (which is BOTH a dos executable AND a Linux kernel).
Put everything in "root" of the virtual disk, so that is easier.
 
Since you don't have a menu.lst it should get you to the command line directly (if not press "c" to get to it).
Then type:
 
 

map --mem /pc

 
[TAB] <- this will expand to pccheck.ima (or whatever you called the image) then complete with (fd0):
 
 
 

map --mem /pccheck.ima (fd0)

 
and press [ENTER]
then :
 
 

map --hook

 
[ENTER]
 
 
 

geometry (fd0)

 
[ENTER]
Post the output of this command. (you will very likely see some errors #25, don't worry)
 
 
 

root (fd0)

[ENTER]
Post the output of this command.
 
 

chainloader /xxxxxx.sys

(replace the xxxxxx.sys with the actual name of Eurodos kernel, which is EuroDOS.sys, but do use the [TAB] completion) then:
[ENTER]
 
 
 

boot

 
[ENTER]
 
It should work (or at least it worked for TheFog on the other thread).
Once we will have the actual data for the image, we will try again with memdisk (still locally), attempting to "force" a geometry or correcting the size of the image (whatever applies).
 
 

Wonko

[Sha0]

Thank you for getting back to me.  I have created the pccheck.vfd and I was wondering is there a special APPEND that is need for a .vfd file because Ive never used one before.

 

ie. for an .img file its APPEND raw

 

LABEL PCCheck

MENU LABEL PC Check

LINUX memdisk

INITRD /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img

APPEND raw

 

Thank you again for all your help with this

No.  Your PXELINUX config-file here is almost fine, except that you chose not to use the same config-file as post #5.  I don't know why you are including the path /var/lib/tftpboot/ on your INITRD line.  I don't know why you don't have pause on the APPEND line.

[deaks]

Hi Sha0

 

when I setting up my pxe server the tutorial said to put all the software in to a folder called /var/lib/tftpboot

 

Ive not tried using the .vfd file yet becuase I didnt know if there was a special APPEND for it, the one above was an example.

 

Thank you again

[deaks]

@wonko

 

Cheers bud

[Icecube]

It should be possible to boot the floppy image with MEMDISK (and PXELINUX):

http://reboot.pro/to...hrouth-network/

 

 

Install mtools in Linux (or use the windows version: http://reboot.pro/fi...ile/267-mtools/) and post the output of the following command:

minfo -v -i /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img ::

 

 

Hi Sha0

 

when I setting up my pxe server the tutorial said to put all the software in to a folder called /var/lib/tftpboot

 

Ive not tried using the .vfd file yet becuase I didnt know if there was a special APPEND for it, the one above was an example.

 

Thank you again

 

The tutorial is right, but /var/lib/tftpboot will be the root of your TFTP server. So a file /var/lib/tftpboot/test will be /test in your PXE environment.

 

[deaks]

Hi Icecube

 

Cheers for clearing that up for me....I didnt know that

 

Deaks

[andriusst]

Hi, I also use PC Check 7.01 at work and am able to PXE boot floppy image with no issues at all using pxelinux.0 and memdisk from syslinux v3.71 . The few differences in config though. I use KERNEL instead LINUX to load memdisk and no APPEND line.

[deaks]

Hi Andrisst

 

Cheers for your post, by any chance can you show me how you have your pxelinux.cfg/default set out please.  Do you use any other software to help it boot.

 

just tried :-

 

LABEL pccheck

MENU LABEL PC Check

KERNEL memdisk

INITRD /pccheck.vfd (also tried .img .iso .ima and without file extension)

 

I got the same result as before, but it might because Im using syslinux 4.02.

 

How did you get your image file of PC Check 7.01 to your server ?

 

Thank you again for your post

 

Deaks

[Sha0]

What is the MEMDISK output if you use the pause option in an APPEND line?  The MEMDISK output will reveal something.

[andriusst]

Hi Andrisst

 

Cheers for your post, by any chance can you show me how you have your pxelinux.cfg/default set out please.  Do you use any other software to help it boot.

my pxelinux.cfg/default :

default /pxelinux.cfg/menu.c32 /pxelinux.cfg/main.cfg

 

and the pxelinux.cfg/main.cfg :

LABEL PCC
		MENU LABEL PC Check 7.0
		KERNEL /pxelinux.cfg/memdisk
		APPEND initrd=/images1/pccheck7.img

 

 

just tried :-

 

LABEL pccheck

MENU LABEL PC Check

KERNEL memdisk

INITRD /pccheck.vfd (also tried .img .iso .ima and without file extension)

This is ALMOST exactly what I have. You only missing the "=" right after initrd

 

I got the same result as before, but it might because Im using syslinux 4.02.

If the above does not help, perhaps you would like to try syslinux v3.71 ? I'm not upgrading any further because of compatibility problems. This version does everything I want to do and I use many components. I've found newer versions to fail here or there depending on a version I tried.

 

How did you get your image file of PC Check 7.01 to your server ?

Cannot remember what I used in this particular case but I use various tools depending on the situation. Winimage (even compressed format), rawwritewin-0.7, diskedit.exe (dos only), normal Windows disk cloning A: to B: where A is real drive and B is virtual floppy (vfd), some other software... Then name the image file anything I want not caring about extension and copy file to tftproot folder. Works every time. Of course must make sure that tftp server software has sufficient permissions to read the file. Check tftp log to ensure the image file is downloaded successfully.

 

Thank you again for your post

 

Deaks

You are welcome, hope you get it working soon.

Edited by andriusst, 16 January 2013 - 12:54 PM.

[Icecube]

What is the output of:

 

find /var/lib/tftpboot -ls

So we can get an idea of your layout of tftp root directory.

 

This menu should work fine (if the paths to the files are correct):

LABEL pccheck
MENU LABEL PC Check
LINUX memdisk
INITRD /pccheck.vfd
APPEND pause

You didn't provide the output I asked for (do it for all PC Check image files you created):

 

Install mtools in Linux (or use the windows version: http://reboot.pro/fi...ile/267-mtools/) and post the output of the following command:

minfo -v -i /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img ::

 

@ andriusst

 

This is ALMOST exactly what I have. You only missing the "=" right after initrd

APPEND initrd=someinitrd

 

is the same as:

 

INITRD someinitrd

 

(I don't remember if it was already supported in your version of PXELINUX or not)

 

You better use LINUX instead of KERNEL when you know that your "kernel" is in the linux kernel format.

When you use LINUX, Syslinux (SYSLINUX, ISOLINUX, PXELINUX) will try to boot it as a linux kernel image, while when using KERNEL, it will guess the format based on the extension.

[deaks]

Hi Icecube & Sha0

 

Find /var/lib/tftpboot -ls :-

 

 

using the,

 

       INITRD /pccheck.vfd

       APPEND pause

 

results are the picture below

 

 

using the,

 

      INITRD /pccheck.vfd

      APPEND raw pause

 

Results are the picture below

 

 

 

minfo -v -i /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img ::

 

init :: non DOS media

 

 

minfo -v -i /var/lib/tftpboot/pccheck.vfd ::

 

root@debian:/home/darren# minfo -v -i /var/lib/tftpboot/pccheck.vfd ::

device information:

===================

filename="/var/lib/tftpboot/pccheck.vfd"

sectors per track: 18

heads: 2

cylinders: 80

mformat command line: mformat -t 80 -h 2 -s 18 ::

bootsector information

======================

banner:"_EuroDOS"

sector size: 512 bytes

cluster size: 1 sectors

reserved (boot) sectors: 1

fats: 2

max available root directory slots: 224

small size: 2880 sectors

media descriptor byte: 0xf0

sectors per fat: 9

sectors per track: 18

heads: 2

hidden sectors: 0

big size: 0 sectors

physical drive id: 0x0

reserved=0x0

dos4=0x0

serial number: 00000000

disk label=" "

disk type="

Boot sector hexdump:

000 eb 3c 90 5f 45 75 72 6f 44 4f 53 00 02 01 01 00 .<._EuroDOS.....

010 02 e0 00 40 0b f0 09 00 12 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 ...@............

020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 ................

030 00 00 00 00 01 00 fa 33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c fc cd .......3.....|..

040 12 c1 e0 06 2d 20 00 8e c0 2d 80 00 8e d0 bc 00 ....- ...-......

050 08 b9 00 01 be 00 7c 31 ff 8e df f3 a5 06 68 62 ......|1......hb

060 00 cb 0e 1f 90 90 90 90 a1 0b 00 c1 e8 04 8b 0e ................

070 16 00 f7 e1 8c d7 29 c7 8e c7 31 db a1 1c 00 8b ......)...1.....

080 16 1e 00 03 06 0e 00 11 da e8 08 01 89 c3 89 d7 ................

090 b8 20 00 8b 36 11 00 f7 e6 f7 36 0b 00 89 c1 a0 . ..6.....6.....

0a0 10 00 98 f7 26 16 00 01 d8 11 fa 06 68 60 00 07 ....&.......h`..

0b0 31 db e8 df 00 01 c8 11 da 52 50 89 df 89 f2 be 1........RP.....

0c0 f3 01 b9 0b 00 26 38 2d 74 0d 60 f3 a6 61 74 0a .....&8-t.`..at.

0d0 81 c7 20 00 4a 75 ee e9 02 01 26 8b 75 1a e8 72 .. .Ju....&.u..r

0e0 00 81 fe f8 0f 72 f7 fa b8 60 00 8e c0 26 81 3e .....r...`...&.>

0f0 00 00 4d 5a 74 14 8c c0 2d 10 00 8e c0 8e d8 8e ..MZt...-.......

100 d0 31 e4 06 68 00 01 e9 42 00 8e d8 3e 03 06 08 .1..h...B...>...

110 00 3e 8b 0e 06 00 3e 8b 1e 18 00 e3 16 3e 8b 3f .>....>......>.?

120 3e 8b 57 02 01 c2 1e 8e da 3e 01 05 1f 81 c3 04 >.W......>......

130 00 e2 ea 89 c3 3e 03 1e 0e 00 8e d3 3e 8b 26 10 .....>......>.&.

140 00 3e 03 06 16 00 50 3e ff 36 14 00 2e 8a 16 24 .>....P>.6.....$

150 00 fb cb 89 e5 8d 44 fe 30 ed 8a 0e 0d 00 f7 e1 ......D.0.......

160 36 03 46 02 36 13 56 04 e8 29 00 a1 0b 00 c1 e8 6.F.6.V..)......

170 04 f7 e1 8c c1 01 c1 8e c1 b8 03 00 f7 e6 d1 e8 ................

180 96 1e 36 8e 5e 06 3e 8b 34 1f 73 03 c1 ee 04 81 ..6.^.>.4.s.....

190 e6 ff 0f c3 60 bf 05 00 60 f7 36 18 00 89 d1 41 ....`...`.6....A

1a0 31 d2 f7 36 1a 00 88 c5 c0 e4 06 08 e1 88 d6 8a 1..6............

1b0 16 24 00 b8 01 02 cd 13 73 0a 30 e4 cd 13 61 4f .$......s.0...aO

1c0 75 d6 eb 13 61 49 74 0d 03 1e 0b 00 05 01 00 81 u...aIt.........

1d0 d2 00 00 eb c0 61 c3 be ec 01 eb 03 be ee 01 b4 .....a..........

1e0 0e bb 07 00 ac cd 10 ac cd 10 eb fe 52 45 4e 46 ............RENF

1f0 00 00 00 45 55 52 4f 44 4f 53 20 53 59 53 55 aa ...EURODOS SYSU.

 

 

 

Thank you again for helping me out with this

 

Deaks

[Icecube]

This image is not a floppy image: /var/lib/tftpboot/PCCheck7.img

This is one of the reason why your original config file didn't work.

 

This floppy image looks fine: /var/lib/tftpboot/pccheck.vfd

 

Are you able to boot the pccheck.vfd floppy image when you press a key after the point you took the pictures?

It normally should boot (at least the floppy image looks valid).