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Mar
09-05-2015, 06:06 PM
This is one of the most bizarre hardware issues I've come across. I have an Acer AC100 server box (http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX57420) and installed Ubuntu 14.04 Server onto it in a RAID5 format. Everything works perfectly fine and rebooting it is flawless. However, if I try and boot it without a keyboard plugged into it, GRUB gets destroyed and I need to boot into a LiveUSB, then run boot-repair in order to fix GRUB. Then when I reboot it works again.

I can reproduce it every time, these are the steps to break it:
- unplug keyboard
- reboot
- system tries to reboot from network client (for some reason) and fails
- plug in LiveUSB
- run boot-repair
- reboot
- works fine again

Like I said, I can shut down and reboot it as often as I want as long as there is a keyboard plugged in. If I try and boot it without a keyboard, it won't boot again even if I plug the keyboard back in again. I must run boot-repair in order to fix it.

Suggestions?

revelations
09-05-2015, 07:07 PM
You've disabled the BIOS kb check?

Mar
09-05-2015, 07:32 PM
The only alarm in the BIOS was a chassis warning and I disabled that. There wasn't a keyboard check in there.

revelations
09-05-2015, 08:07 PM
BIOS update?

Is this a headless server?

01RedDX
09-05-2015, 08:42 PM
.

The_Penguin
09-05-2015, 08:47 PM
I've actually heard of this before.
Don't recall what the fix was, other than leave a keyboard plugged in.

revelations
09-05-2015, 09:13 PM
If its a headless server, you may need a DVI fix as well - I had to add a resistor to a couple of pins in a DVI-VGA adaper to make an old server work headless once.

Ubuntu is great - ONCE - you get it all working.

Mar
09-05-2015, 10:47 PM
Originally posted by revelations
If its a headless server, you may need a DVI fix as well - I had to add a resistor to a couple of pins in a DVI-VGA adaper to make an old server work headless once.

Ubuntu is great - ONCE - you get it all working.
It is headless but it ships with Windows IIS which I removed. I called Acer and they said Ubuntu is not an officially supported distribution so they can't guarantee it'll work but this is totally bizarre. And I can't run any BIOS updates without Windows since they're all packed in .eve. files.

I don't get how the absence of a keyboard can destroy GRUB. Isn't GRUB installed in the /boot partition? How would that even happen?

revelations
09-05-2015, 11:36 PM
Unless you want to turn into a Ubuntu developer - spending hours trying to figure it all out, I would just apply the same fix using a resistor - to simulate a keyboard being installed (if you CANT leave one connected).

Just need to cut up a USB cable with a specific resistor soldered in.

Hell, it could be a BT keyboard too - just sitting on a shelf.

Robin Goodfellow
09-06-2015, 01:48 AM
Originally posted by revelations

Ubuntu is great - ONCE - you get it all working.

http://www.demoties.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/8.jpg

revelations
09-06-2015, 11:33 AM
^ I once had the pleasure of figuring out Ubuntu SMB on a Windows 2008 DC network ..... yea that lasted about 3 days ..... lol

(I was able to set it up at home in a non-DC environment, wasnt worth the effort for the DC client)

firebane
09-06-2015, 06:01 PM
Originally posted by Robin Goodfellow


http://www.demoties.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/8.jpg

You haven't had to actually compile a Linux OS in several years. We are well beyond that and most major distributions use some form of a repository.

The_Penguin
09-07-2015, 10:51 AM
Ahh the good old days. Had to build a new kernel just to enable IP Masquerading.

Now, install Centos, and it just works, and very well.

revelations
09-07-2015, 10:59 AM
I switched my folks to Ubuntu from XP. They cant tell the difference as all their desktop, icons and links/emails work exactly the same.

Zhariak
09-07-2015, 11:09 AM
Originally posted by Mar
This is one of the most bizarre hardware issues I've come across. I have an Acer AC100 server box (http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX57420) and installed Ubuntu 14.04 Server onto it in a RAID5 format. Everything works perfectly fine and rebooting it is flawless. However, if I try and boot it without a keyboard plugged into it, GRUB gets destroyed and I need to boot into a LiveUSB, then run boot-repair in order to fix GRUB. Then when I reboot it works again.

I can reproduce it every time, these are the steps to break it:
- unplug keyboard
- reboot
- system tries to reboot from network client (for some reason) and fails
- plug in LiveUSB
- run boot-repair
- reboot
- works fine again

Like I said, I can shut down and reboot it as often as I want as long as there is a keyboard plugged in. If I try and boot it without a keyboard, it won't boot again even if I plug the keyboard back in again. I must run boot-repair in order to fix it.

Suggestions?

That's really really bizarre..

Check the grub config, make sure there's no weird switches or prompts, nothing checking for anything...

It's been a while since I've played with grub (used to do PXE remote boots, tons of stuff when I got Redhat running on the Xbox, lol)...

Try adding some flags to remove the delay/user prompt. Edit the config to boot straight to the option you want..

Just curious, when you installed grub (not sure if you did, or install did it), did you install it to the MBR, or boot partition?

Also, I know that some of these small servers have a built in flash device for emergency firmware loading or OS installed. Check the boot order, make sure it's not loading up the flash that may be installed on the device... There could be something funky there.

If the device does have built in flash for emergency booting... Use dd, save it to a file (for your own backup), and then use the grub commands to install the bootloader to the onboard flash, this might also avoid some issues.

Zhariak
09-07-2015, 11:21 AM
And just to add to my last post...

About 5-6 years ago, I was playing with a firewall appliance that ran a BSD variant... Put CentOS on it.

Sucker had a laptop ATA connector, and onboard flash... Originally device ran everything off flash, ATA was unused...

Put linux on it with a laptop HD through ATA, if I remember correctly, I had some issues booting because of the onboard flash.

Had to create a custom initial ramdisk, and use a custom built GRUB image to load a kernel and initrd to load the network install and provide the UI over serial terminal.

Ended up imaging the onboard flash using dd to save a backup, then loaded GRUB on to the MBR of the flash. I ended up just putting the kernel and initial ramdisk on the flash (kinda cool), and had it load the OS off the laptop drive.

Similar situation...

revelations
09-07-2015, 11:35 AM
As a contractor though - do you really want to become a systems developer for a client on their time when an easy fix is ready at hand?

Sure there might be some beneficial learning experience from this, but OP could just as easily use a BT keyboard/mouse and it would work just fine. :dunno:

Robin Goodfellow
09-07-2015, 07:03 PM
Originally posted by revelations
As a contractor though - do you really want to become a systems developer for a client on their time when an easy fix is ready at hand?

Sure there might be some beneficial learning experience from this, but OP could just as easily use a BT keyboard/mouse and it would work just fine. :dunno:

Linux seems to be for people who like doing it the hard way. The benefit of this head pounding exercise is unclear to me.

Running windows 7 here. Works fine.

toor
09-07-2015, 08:37 PM
Double-check boot order, disable netboot, disable option ROMs

firebane
09-07-2015, 08:40 PM
Originally posted by Robin Goodfellow


Linux seems to be for people who like doing it the hard way. The benefit of this head pounding exercise is unclear to me.

Running windows 7 here. Works fine.

The hard way? Linux does things that Windows can't and vice versa. To be versed in both is a huge benefit.

The_Penguin
09-08-2015, 08:21 AM
Originally posted by firebane


The hard way? Linux does things that Windows can't and vice versa. To be versed in both is a huge benefit.

Yup. A huge portion of the internet runs on LAMP

toor
09-08-2015, 10:20 PM
Originally posted by The_Penguin
Yup. A huge portion of the internet runs on LAMP

LAMP is so last decade; over 1/3rd of internet traffic is served by nginx on FreeBSD

//jihad

UndrgroundRider
09-09-2015, 12:01 AM
Originally posted by toor


LAMP is so last decade; over 1/3rd of internet traffic is served by nginx on FreeBSD

//jihad

Hah, no. 47.2% of all web servers run Apache. 11.3% run nginx. The majority of those are proxied by cloudflare and not actually running nginx on the back-end.

35.9% of all webservers are running Linux, 30.9% Windows, 0.95% BSD, and the rest could not be fingerprinted.

Data as of Feb 15 2015, source W3Techs.com.

toor
09-09-2015, 12:33 AM
Originally posted by UndrgroundRider
Hah, no. 47.2% of all web servers run Apache. 35.9% of all webservers are running Linux, 30.9% Windows
Ah, but that's not what I said ;)

Originally posted by toor
over 1/3rd of internet traffic is served by nginx on FreeBSD

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTExNDM
Netflix represents 30% of all North American internet traffic during peak hours, and FreeBSD is becoming an integral part of that metric as we shift traffic off of the traditional CDNs.

...plus Cloudflare pushing nginx traffic, and sites like Apache, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Sony, Verisign, etc running on FreeBSD, then there's the FreeBSD derivatives like OS X, Cisco, Juniper, etc. so ma and pa can keep their Loonix and Apoochie toys! Heck, the top news item on w3techs (way cooler than Netcraft btw, thx) extols the virtues of nginx:


http://w3techs.com/blog/entry/25_percent_of_the_web_runs_nginx_including_46_6_percent_of_the_top_10000_sites
Nginx reached a new milestone, as one quarter of all websites now rely on that technology. It became the most used web server among top sites already two years ago.

Accordingly, the list of sites using Nginx reads like the who's who of the web: Wikipedia, WordPress, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Dropbox, Slideshare, Stackexchange, we could go on for hours.

Reverse proxies or not, that's a lot of public pakitts. Looks like PHP scripting lingo is still the top dog by far. I wonder how Oracle's MySQL is faring against Postgres.

UndrgroundRider
09-09-2015, 01:15 AM
Originally posted by toor

Ah, but that's not what I said ;)


Ok, I'll bite. Presuming you were being foolish and talking about total bytes served and not total requests, you're still wrong. NetFlix comprises less than 5% of global internet traffic during peak periods, much much less in off hours. The numbers you're citing are for the US, and during peak periods, and downstream to residential users only. On a global scale things like Facebook video autoplay crush the NetFlix traffic numbers. Which by the way, uses LAMP (sort of).