How does MAAS pick which volume to boot from?

[Daniel K]

Sending new message since the list doesn't like embedded images --

Andres,

Thank you for the response.

I first set the boot order in BIOS to boot the PXE nic, then the Micro SD
card (bios name is "USB Drivekey"

Then I commission machine, remove the default boot device(one of the
spinning drives -- /dev/sda), add a btrfs partition to the Micro SD
card(/dev/sdc), mount it at "/" and tick the "boot" radio button next to it
and then deploy.

When the server reboots, the PXE loader tries to boot one of the spinning
drives instead of the MicroSD card. If I interrupt the boot process(via
F11) and manually select the MicroSD card, the server will boot. It will
also boot if, after deployment, I change the boot order in bios to just
boot the MicroSD card, but then this breaks things as I have to change the
boot order again to redeploy the machine, something not fun to do for 100+
servers.

See screenshot of config here https://imgur.com/50qsSpc


There must be something that tells the PXE loader which physical disk to
try to boot -- and this process is either selecting the wrong disk during
deployment, or the HPE bios is switching around the order drives are
presented after install. Just trying to find that setting in MAAS so that I
can set it to the proper drive.

Ideally the behavior should be corrected(bug report?), but that's a longer
road than just changing the setting.

Thank you,


Dan

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Andres Rodriguez <
andres.rodriguez at canonical.com> wrote:

> HI Daniel,
>
> It seems that you would need to configure the disk where you want to
> install "/" as the first boot disk on the BIOS, provided that the OS (nor
> MAAS) has a way to determine which is the disk the machine will be booting
> from.
>
> That said, this issue no longer exists on machines that use EFI, provided
> that it will automatically detect from which disk to boot from.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 8:27 PM, Daniel K <sathackr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I know how to select the boot volume in the node configuration page --
>> I'm referring to the actual physical drive that the PXE bootloader boots
>> when a node is powered up. And if there is a way to change this in the node
>> configuration?
>>
>> I'm having an issue installing to the micro-sd card of some HP SL230S
>> servers. The card is detected, I configure the node to mount the card at
>> "/" using the btrfs filesystem and tick the boot radio button next to it.
>> Deploying completes up to the final reboot. the PXE boot selects the wrong
>> drive and I get a "illegal opcode" error.
>>
>> If I manually interrupt the boot sequence and select the SD card as the
>> boot device, the server boots.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Dan
>>
>>
>> --
>> Maas-devel mailing list
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Andres Rodriguez
> Engineering Manager, MAAS
> Canonical USA, Inc.
>
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