[BBLISA] MBR that reboots machine

[Aaron Macks]

Is is possible to increase the PXE timeout in the NIC BIOS?  Set the
timeout long enough and it'll keep asking for the PXE kernel until the
server has come online.  I know this means a bios change to every machine
manually, but at least there's no maintenance

A

-------------
Aaron Macks(aaronm at wiglaf.org)
http://www.wiglaf.org/~aaronm/
My sheep has seven gall bladders, that makes me the King of the Universe!

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Paul Beltrani <spamgrinder at gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally, I'd go with the thumb drive solution.  They're cheap in bulk
> and it's a simple fix.  However, that doesn't answer your question.
>
> Re rebooting directly from MBR
> I can't think of anything that runs completely out of the MBR.  (Perhaps
> the original version of GRUB?  It's been too long and I don't recall.)
> While GRUB2 looks for configs/menus in a boot partition, it is FOSS and
> you may be able to modify it to simply do a system reset.  See
> https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
>
>   -- Paul Beltrani
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Alex Aminoff <alex at basespace.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 10/7/2016 11:02 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Can you install a tiny boot partition containing etherboot/gpxe
>>> (http://etherboot.org/wiki/howtos) which will then try to PXE
>>> boot indefinitely? It fits on a floppy or tiny USB, too.
>>>
>>> That would be a backup plan if we can not find something that fits in
>> just the MBR. The local HDs already have partitions on them, they could be
>> re-partitioned to create space for a small partition as you suggest, but
>> that would be a hassle. We have also thought of using a USB stick, but
>> those are unreliable and we would have to buy and configure 20-30 USB
>> sticks.
>>
>>
>> Can you alter the BIOS config to not boot off local disk?
>>>
>>
>> Unfortunately the BIOS does not re-try booting from the beginning after
>> trying all the options in the boot order. It gives you a screen that says
>> something like "no OS found, press any key to reboot".
>>
>>
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