amtterm catching boot options vs installing gentoo

vespaman

Hi all,

I admit this is a bit lazy, but I would like to install gentoo on a computer mounted in a rack, which is headless.
I *could* of course get there, unscrew it and bring it to some place where I have a monitor and keyboard.

Here's current status;
* I have plugged a live USB into one of the USB ports, but it does not boot from it.
* I have root login to the box over ssh. It is some kind of debian install ~4yo by the looks of it.
* I have AMT access to the box, sort of: I can put my browser to it, and it shows me the Intel AMT stuff, I can reboot etc.
* I exposes 3 sata disks + the USB stick.
* If I use amtterm while I reset the machine from the AMT webui, I this is what I get;

pingtoo · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 4:52 pm Post subject:

May be you can share more about your remote machine setup. For example partition lay out and if there is any boot loader used.

In general, if your machine can boot you don't need USB for install Gentoo. you don't have to make any changes to boot device changes if your boot device have enough space for kernel/initrd.

I suggest you start with stage3 install in a chroot setup. follow by configure a new boot entry with your current kernel but with different boot command line option with the new "root=..." to use the newly created stage3 install.

Once you know you can successfully boot with Gentoo rootfs, then consider build/install Gentoo kernel.

I think with this procedure you don't need connect monitor/keyboard to your remote computer.

vespaman · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 5:07 pm Post subject:

Sure!
The boot disk seems to have this setup:

pingtoo · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 5:17 pm Post subject:

vespaman · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 5:28 pm Post subject:

Yes, my original intention was to install gentoo over this existing os. I thought this would not be too complicated, since I have the AMT, but, yeah...

So I suspect your suggestion is to install into another drive, then once that is up, reinstall on the current root disk?
I suppose this is doable, but I'd still then would like to get AMT going, at least for grub, since it only takes one mistake to brick the machine if there's no access to grub.

pingtoo · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 5:41 pm Post subject:

vespaman · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 8:16 pm Post subject:

Yes, this is SOL. I think that the last time (years ago), when I had this in use, I proabably had grub<2 and definately systemV, this debian installation has grub2 and systemd. I suspect this is why it does not work.
Maybe I'll give up on AMT and take my chances. If things go bad, I'll have to consider getting the machine out.

Cheers,
- the lazy one

pingtoo · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 9:47 pm Post subject:

On your current installation (assume the debian) you should have /boot/grub.conf file. You can examine to see if it have serial port setup as instructed in the GRUB url.

The key I am suggestion is at this point you don't need to concern modify BIOS yet (because the AMT may not allow you do that) but modify inside linux should change the boot behaviors, if you can create a new grub entry using the existing boot entry and modified with serial setup and may be change the boot default timing to a bit longer so you have chance to interrupt grub to allow you select kernel then you are good to go.