The problem: How to set PXE as the preferred boot device on a default HP dl360 g7 from Linux?
The key words here are “from Linux”. No iLO tricks are allowed. Of course, the simple answer should be: “use ipmitool!”. However, ipmitool (I’m currently using ipmitool-1.8.11-6.el6.x86_64 in Scientific Linux 6) doesn’t quite seem to do the trick here. The following have been tried without success:
[root@localhost ~]# ipmitool chassis bootdev pxe Set Boot Device to pxe [root@localhost ~]# reboot
[root@localhost ~]# ipmitool chassis bootparam set bootflag force_pxe Set Boot Device to force_pxe [root@localhost ~]# reboot
[root@localhost ~]# ipmitool chassis bootdev pxe clear-cmos=yes Set Boot Device to pxe [root@localhost ~]# reboot
It is nice to know that the dl360 g7 will PXE boot if it is unable to boot from the local hard drive. This behaviour can be used as a (not-so-pretty-ok-I-admit-it-is-very-very-VERY-ugly-but-it-works-for-me type of) workaround:
[root@localhost ~]# modprobe ipmi_si [root@localhost ~]# modprobe ipmi_devintf [root@localhost ~]# alias reinstall="/bin/dd if=/dev/zero \ of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 2>/dev/null ; sync ; \ ipmitool chassis bootparam set bootflag force_pxe \ >/dev/null ; reboot" [root@localhost ~]# reinstall
(The alias is called reinstall because booting from PXE will, in this setup, reinstall the node.)
Good luck!