Booting a CD or DVD from a running Linux system
I have no possibility of accessing the BIOS on one of my machines--no screen (the system is hopelessly buried behind other equipment) and no one to read it even if I had one. This system booted from its DVD drive at one time, but now no longer does, and I don't know why. I can mount the DVD with the command: mount -t 9660 -o ro cdrom and show the filesystem with df, but if I reboot the system with the reboot command or turn it on from cold, seems like the DVD drive gets bypassed. I have also tried booting the system from a USB thumb drive suitably prepaired with Debian 11.6 by writing it with IMGBurn, and still no joy no matter which USB port I choose. Is there a way to force the CD/DVD drive to boot from maybe an installed boot manager package that I can install on my Debian 8 system so as to boot the Debian 11 DVD and regenerate my system?
Ah, it is the classic problem, isn't it? There's hope though. Maybe your system is ipmi enabled. Ipmi stands for intelligent platform management interface. It's a way to control the BIOS/EUFI via the command line. If your system is ipmi enabled, you should be able to configure it to boot from a CD or USB stick. I would recommend you google it but here is a link on how to install ipmitool on Debian: https://linuxhint.com/ipmi-linux-command/ And here is a link to the ipmitool man page: https://linux.die.net/man/1/ipmitool On 3/14/23 16:02, Steve Matzura wrote:
I have no possibility of accessing the BIOS on one of my machines--no screen (the system is hopelessly buried behind other equipment) and no one to read it even if I had one. This system booted from its DVD drive at one time, but now no longer does, and I don't know why. I can mount the DVD with the command:
mount -t 9660 -o ro cdrom
and show the filesystem with df, but if I reboot the system with the reboot command or turn it on from cold, seems like the DVD drive gets bypassed. I have also tried booting the system from a USB thumb drive suitably prepaired with Debian 11.6 by writing it with IMGBurn, and still no joy no matter which USB port I choose. Is there a way to force the CD/DVD drive to boot from maybe an installed boot manager package that I can install on my Debian 8 system so as to boot the Debian 11 DVD and regenerate my system?
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-- John .G. Heim jheim@math.wisc.edu
On 14/3/23 17:02, Steve Matzura wrote:
Is there a way to force the CD/DVD drive to boot from maybe an installed boot manager package that I can install on my Debian 8 system so as to boot the Debian 11 DVD and regenerate my system?
If it's a UEFI system, you can change the boot order and other parameters using the efibootmgr command. If it's an older machine with traditional Bios-based firmware, and there's no option to access the firmware interface over IPMI or a serial port, then you're lacking any standard option as far as I know.
I couldn't install the EPI management package. I got the message that the package couldn't be certified or validated or some such thing. apt-get asked if I wanted to install it anyway, I said yes, and the whole thing failed regardless. I've dragged the system out and will set up a monitor this weekend. On 3/17/2023 4:38 PM, Jason White via Blind-sysadmins wrote:
On 14/3/23 17:02, Steve Matzura wrote:
Is there a way to force the CD/DVD drive to boot from maybe an installed boot manager package that I can install on my Debian 8 system so as to boot the Debian 11 DVD and regenerate my system?
If it's a UEFI system, you can change the boot order and other parameters using the efibootmgr command.
If it's an older machine with traditional Bios-based firmware, and there's no option to access the firmware interface over IPMI or a serial port, then you're lacking any standard option as far as I know.
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participants (3)
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Jason White -
John G. Heim -
Steve Matzura