PXE bios update, was RE: [Beowulf] Performance issue - CPU Intel 00/02

[John Hearns]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 09:56 -0700, David Mathog wrote:
> Guy Coates <gmpc at sanger.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > >
> > > that's what I'd do.  remember that you can use pxe to boot a bios-update
> > > image, so you don't necessarily have to touch each machine.
> > >
> > If you are stuck with bios updates that only comes as DOS floppy images,
> > you can use bpbatch to turn them into PXE-bootable images.
> > 
> > http://cui.unige.ch/info/pc/remote-boot/soft/
> 
> That's all very interesting but I've seen all sorts of whacko things
> happen with BIOS upgrades.  For instance, the loss of all
> previous settings (the default in the last Tyan BIOS upgrader
I agree. We've had problems with a certain motherboard when the BIOS is
redirected to serial, and yes its common for the BIOS settings to be
reset when you do an upgrade.

Roll on Linuxbios, or any replacement which makes it possible to manage
large farms an update via a network boot.