armijo@cs.unm.edu writes:
this would be very cool, or better yet: 'boot cdrom', which i have heard rumored several times , anyone at NetApp want to confirm/deny this may actually happen?
cdrom would be ok, better than floppies, but still limiting in other ways. With floppies, you can make new images as often as you like or need. With cdrom's, you are stuck unless you have a cd burner (which are more common place now) and the time to spend doing so.
I think a better solution would be to use the same media the digital cameras of today use. If you use the SmartMedia style, you are limited to the size of images (I think it only goes to 16MB right now). The CompactFlash cards are much sturdier and go to 96MB.
The great things with either of these formats are:
- cheap media - inexpensive media readers ($70 for a USB version) - good support across most OS'es for the readers - PCMCIA media adapters (so PCMCIA might be a good interface to the filer)
and:
- I can go to WalMart at 3AM and buy the media and card reader in case of an emergency
Including this as a peripheral with every filer is inexpensive (well, cheaper than a ZIP drive or a cdrom burner).
I realize there are many competing formats for the next generation of filer boot media, but the digital cameras are pretty wide spread now and the flash card format will be around a while.
Alex
I can offer this:
At the "ok" prompt, you can issue the command:
setenv floppy-boot? true
This will read the current image off the hard drive, Read Disk labels, Spin-up disks if necessary and configure disks.
Remember, this is reading the image from the harddisk. If you need a special release or something like that, and it has not been put to disk with the filer's "download" command you will still need a set of floppy disks to boot from.
At this point somewhere on the screen you will see floppy-boot? and the LCD sceen should say "waiting for user input"
Simply press y or n followed by a return:
n - boot normally
y - will display the 1 thru 5 boot menu and give whatever access you would have from floppy
WARNING: do not forget to issue one of the following at the "ok" prompt after you are done tinkering:
setenv floppy-boot? false OR unsetenv floppy-boot?
Failure to do so will result in the filer waiting for user input on every reboot.
I usually will do one extra reboot, just to clear this variable.
--tmac
-- Timothy A. McCarthy --> System Engineer, Eastern Region. Network Appliance http://www.netapp.com 301-230-5847 Office \ / Page Me at: 301-230-5852 Fax / 800-654-9619
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Timothy A. McCarthy