Provisioner uses Clonezilla (www.clonezilla.org) as the basis for its Imaging, Ubuntu Live ("Rescue CD") and Windows Server 2008/Windows 7 Provisioning capabilities.

 

In order for any of these features to work, the Network Interface Card (NIC) and storage controllers must be supported in the kernel of the version of Ubuntu used by Clonezilla.

 

To confirm hardware support issues and to further troubleshoot your Client system's hardware, you must install the most recent version of Clonezilla Live "Alternative Stable": download the ISO from http://clonezilla.org/downloads/download.php?branch=alternative and burn the ISO to CD-ROM, then boot your system from CD-ROM, then go to the command line. Note that Clonezilla loads in RAM and will not impact your hard drive contents unless you instruct it to do so. The lshw command is helpful to get a complete picture of the Client system's hardware components

 

 

Network Interface Card Drivers Missing

 

If the NIC is not recognized by the kernel, you will see the Client screen displaying a message containing to "the ethernet card is not supported by the kernel" similar to the screen below:

 

 

 

The command lspci can be very helpful in resolving NIC driver issues. After booting Clonezilla Live "Alternative Stable" (see above), go to the command line:

 

$ lspci |grep -i ethernet

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82541PI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 05)

01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (rev 02)

 

2 Ethernet cards were found in this example. Focus on the 1st column, i.e. 01:00.0 and 01:08.0, then run:

$ lspci -n | grep "^01:00.0"

01:00.0 0200: 8086:107c (rev 05)

$ lspci -n | grep "^01:08.0"

01:08.0 0200: 8086:1050 (rev 02)

You will now see the PCI Device ID for each NIC in the 3rd column. The PCI Device ID contains 2 components: vendor name and device.

 

Intel's vendor ID is 8086, and in the example above, you can search for the PCI Device ID and find the Intel 82541PI, and search for PCI Device ID  8086:1050 and find the Intel 82562EZ.

 

Now, you can look up the PCI Device ID in the kernel module PCI map file, i.e., the file /lib/modules/`uname -r`/modules.pcimap. First, convert vendor ID and device ID to the format used in modules.pcimap by putting "0"x in front of each ID, then by adding as many "0" as required to make the string 10 characters long:

$ grep "0x00008086 0x0000107c" /lib/modules/`uname -r`/modules.pcimap

e1000                0x00008086 0x0000107c 0xffffffff 0xffffffff

0x00000000 0x00000000 0x0

In the example above, the PCI ID was found in the kernels modules list, and the module name is "e1000".

Now you can run lsmod to see if the driver has been loaded:

$ lsmod |grep -w e1000

e1000                 101089  0

In this example, the driver has been loaded since the command returns the driver name.

 

Intel offers some helpful hints for identifying NICs using their PCI ID on systems running other operating systems: http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-012904.htm

 

 

Storage Controller Drivers Missing

 

Often, if a storage controller is not recognized, the Imaging, Live Ubuntu or Provisioning of Windows Server 2008/Windows 7 event will not complete, and instead a screen similar to the one below will appear:

 

 

 

The command cat /proc/partitions/ will  name the storage device names if recognized by the kernel. After booting Clonezilla Live "Alternative Stable" (see above), go to the command line:

$ cat /proc/partitions

major minor  #blocks  name

 

  8     0  157286400 sda

  8     1      48163 sda1

  8     2    4088542 sda2

  8     3    2064352 sda3

  8     4          1 sda4

  8     5  151083261 sda5

If no storage device name is shown, then the kernel does not support it.

 

If the kernel does not support the storage controller, you can use hwinfo or lshw to get the storage controller hardware info.

You can also use lspci to obtain additional information on the device, as was outlined in the section above (NIC Drivers):

$ lspci | grep -i SATA

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)

 

 

Generating .txt files of your Client system's hardware

 

When logged in as root:

lshw > lshw.txt

lspci > lspci-1.txt

lspci -n > lspci-2.txt

hwinfo > hwinfo.txt

cat /proc/partitions > partitions.txt

 

 

 

When Drivers are Not Supported/Missing

 

If your Client system's Network or Storage/RAID controller is not recognized by the Provisioner PXE Server, it may be possible to support it by rebuilding the Imaging Subsystem with the appropriate open source driver, provided market demand exists for this device. If no open source driver is available, then the device cannot be supported. As new hardware is introduced, driver support may lag, as it may take a release or more for the open source community to add driver support to the Ubuntu kernel. Contact Support for more information.

 

 

Error Message: "Broken Partition Images"

 

 

Should you see this error, you will have dropped from unattended mode to interactive mode.  To avoid this, use the "sc" backup option to "skip the check" of the backed up partition. The integrity of the backed up image/partition will not be affected.

 

 

If you still require assistance, please follow the instructions in "Contacting Technical Support".