Network install on pcengines board

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I am trying to do a network install on a pcengines board.

These boards support ipxe, so there is no need to setup a dhcp/tfpt server. Just an ipxe script and a http server to serve the images.

the ipxe commands I use to boot are these:

set base-url http://192.168.100.1/images/openwrt
set version  19.07.7
kernel ${base-url}/openwrt-${version}-x86-64-vmlinuz console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/ram0 rw
initrd ${base-url}/openwrt-${version}-x86-64-rootfs-ext4.img
boot

The kernel boots but then panics.

Looking at the output I noticed the following:

[    0.958644] Unpacking initramfs...
[    0.962112] Initramfs unpacking failed: junk in compressed archive
[    1.179567] Freeing initrd memory: 262144K

So it looks like my intitrd image is not good. But where do I get a good image?

2

Where did you get the image you use ?

3

Since https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.7/targets/x86/geode/ does not list an initramfs image, I assume you have to build it yourself.

4

Hi
I used x86_64 combined-ext4.img to my APU1 board. This image will allocate 256M of you disk. You can resize the partion so it fits your disk.

5

Did you do this over the network, or using an USB stick?

6

I am using https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.7/targets/x86/64/
The geode is used on the older Alix board. The APU boards are full 64 bit x86 processors...
But yes, no initramfs. I guess I will have to look in to making one myself.

7

The very first time I did it with USB, then I have done the upgrade via sysupgrade with a home made image.