[rescue] Ultra 24 BIOS / Gbe configuration

[sawbona at gmx.net]

Hello:

> "Even though the BIOS has no user or system passwords set I cannot access
the on-board
> Gbe settings, as they are greyed out. ie: blocked 
> This means that I cannot disable WoL or change the power management settings
for the
> on-board Intel 82566DM-2 Gbe controller in the BIOS."

After a few more hours of fruitless searching on the web I decided to sift
through all I had on
the Ultra 24 once again.

One of the items was the *.iso file with the (last available version)
Tools_and_Drivers_1.6.0
CD.

I went through all the files I had *never* read before (Windows related files)
as I thought they
were not pertinent (still do) basically because I use Linux and not an MS OS.

Half way through this process I came across a *.txt file buried deep in the CD
structure:

/drivers/windows/nic/apps/bootagnt/ibautil.txt

It reads:

********************
"IBAUTIL is a utility program that changes the default settings of your
Intel WfM-compatible adapter.

IBAUTIL can be used to enable or disable the Wake-on-LAN and Boot Agent
capabilities, as well as enable or disable some settings used by the
Boot Agent."

and

"NOTE: Desktop adapters are normally shipped with both WOL and the Boot
Agent enabled."
---
"To enable or disable these features you MUST use IBAUTIL."
(caps in the original text, not mine)

********************

Curiously enough, although the booteable Tools_and_Drivers_1.6.0 CD can be
used to run
hardware diagnostics, flash the system BIOS and even "erase the primary boot
disk", it does
*not* provide an option to run the ibautil utility to disable WoL or update
and/or disable the
NIC's Boot Agent.

ibautil.exe can *only* be run under plain DOS with no memory managers loaded,
so I made a
booteable FreeDOS 1.0 USB drive with the content of the /drivers/windows/nic/
folder and run
the utility to disable WoL.

Using the utility I also found out that the ethernet controller in the Ultra
24 has no flash
memory to hold a boot.rom image, so the Intel Boot Agent is controlled by the
system BIOS
(LAN Boot) which *can* be disabled.

I guess that this is probably the reason (?) why the ethernet controller
cannot be disabled in
BIOS.

There's still the issue of the EEE settings for the e1000e driver, but that's
kernel module stuff
I have to dig around to find a solution.

Cheers,

U24