The initrd's busybox has the tr applet but no /bin/tr link, so the
quiet boot printed "/init: line 140: tr: not found" and the stage 1/2
dashboard posts were skipped. sed is linked.
Automates the Blancco parts of the onsite-support CMMC playbook:
- ENT-056/158 evidence pack: /reports/evidence?month=YYYY-MM returns
ENT-056_<Site>_<YYYY-MM>.zip (summary.csv, README, each report's XML
and PDF). pxe-blancco-evidence.timer saves last month's pack to the
reports share's evidence/ folder on the 1st (Persistent).
- ENT-045/159 ServiceNow tick list: /reports/servicenow lists recent
reports as "Wiped" or "Blancco Wipe failed" with a pre-written
destruction note, copy buttons and Done (CSRF-protected).
- Cloud upload: blancco-progress.py posts each report's upload result
("Sending report document id" -> "Report sent to MC") to
/reports/cloud-status (CSRF-exempt like /imaging/status); the Reports
page and the CSVs show it, so a wipe missing from BMP is visible.
- CSV gains failure_reason (exception messages, failed steps, error
counts), business_location and cloud_upload.
- Preferences: business_location "West Jefferson" (config.BLANCCO_SITE)
and pdf+xml reports; the report copier now copies the PDF too, named
after its XML. .part and hidden files are not listed as reports.
State (cloud confirmations, ServiceNow ticks) is a JSON file at
/var/lib/pxe-webapp/blancco-state.json, off the report share.
Each Blancco PC now gets a tile on /imaging, keyed by BIOS serial with
pctype "blancco", using the /imaging/status endpoint the WinPE clients
already post to (stage_total 7):
1 Downloading Blancco, 2 Starting Blancco (blancco-init.sh, wget)
3 Waiting for licence / Licence OK (N left)
4 Erasing: step N - <step> [NN%]
5 Erasure finished / Report saved
6 Report sent to cloud
7 Done (succeeded), or Erasure FAILED (failed, sticks)
playbook/blancco-progress.py follows the AlbusSeven journal inside the
Blancco rootfs and maps its lines to those stages; patterns taken from
a real 7.20 auto-mode run and replayed with --replay/--dry-run, plus a
synthetic failed step. Init fetches it from the web root at boot and
installs it as blancco-progress.service; the playbook deploys it there.
The report copier adds a "Report copied to share" log line. Stage 1
resets a finished tile for the same serial. All posts are best effort.
process=auto erases unattended but Albus forces auto_backup off outside
workflow/manual, so every report needed a manual Save to reach the
share. Debug SSH on a live 7.20 run showed Albus does keep each report
at /reports/<document_id>.xml ("Report saving success", "CRC verified")
and uploads it to MC, with /mnt/share already mounted.
Install blancco-report-sync as a systemd service in the new root: every
10s copy each finished /reports/*.xml (older than 5s, not yet copied)
to /mnt/share as YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_report.xml (UTC, as a manual Save
names it), via a .part file and rename. Verified live: the auto-run
report landed as 20261005_164520_report.xml.
With blancco.debug=1 the init now also creates /etc/debug.environment in
the new root (Blancco's isDebugMode, so 2_sshd starts sshd) and installs
root's authorized_keys from http://<server>/blancco/debug_authorized_keys.
Root is locked and sshd is key-only, so normal boots stay closed and a
debug boot without that file on the server stays closed too.
Used to find where Albus keeps the finished report in process=auto, which
never auto-backs-up to the share. Live GetPxeScript.aspx has a matching
"Blancco Drive Eraser (debug / SSH)" item (UEFI, 7.0 kernel, verbose);
not in the playbook menu.
On a native boot config.img is an initrd and archiso leaves its files in
/run/initramfs, where /opt/scripts/inc/1_reportKey, 2_certificate,
1_config and 2_flexible_container install report.key, ca.pem,
hybrid.ids and the flexible container. The Ubuntu-kernel UEFI path never
created /run/initramfs, so 1_reportKey wrote an empty /albus/report.key
and the rest were skipped (true since 7.15). Fetch config.img, unpack it
on a tmpfs mounted at the new root's /run (systemd keeps an existing
/run), and fail loudly if report.key is missing.
First real 7.20 run (Dell Pro 5 14, Panther Lake, 7.0 kernel) licensed
and erased, but did not start the cloud workflow on its own or save the
report without a click; the missing report key is the leading suspect.
- Fetch kmod-$KVER.tar.gz first, falling back to kmod.tar.gz, so more
than one boot kernel can share the web root. Live now boots the UEFI
path on Ubuntu's 24.04 HWE 7.0.0-34-generic kernel: Panther Lake
laptops (Dell Pro 14, AX211 on CNVi) need iwlwifi firmware API 100,
which the 6.8 driver cannot load. 6.8 stays deployed as the rollback.
- The 10s DefaultTimeoutStopSec did not reach the /mnt/share mount: a
mount unit's timeout is TimeoutSec=, defaulting to the start timeout.
Add a mnt-share.mount drop-in with TimeoutSec=10s, LazyUnmount=yes and
ForceUnmount=yes.
NOT in the playbook yet: it builds the initrd and kmod tarball from the
server's running kernel (6.8). The 7.0 artifacts on 172.16.9.1 were
built off-box; installing linux-generic-hwe-24.04 on the server is what
makes a playbook run reproduce them.
The UEFI loader ran under set -x and printed modprobe -v, ip link and
ip addr, and neither kernel cmdline had quiet, so the screen scrolled
hundreds of lines before the Blancco GUI. Now:
- quiet loglevel=3 on both Blancco kernel lines (also quiets systemd)
- init clears the screen and prints one line per step
- blancco.debug=1 on the cmdline restores the old trace
- failure paths still print their diagnostics and drop to a shell
Live GetPxeScript.aspx changed to match (backup
.bak-20261005-pre-quiet) and kexec-initrd.img rebuilt.
Restarting Blancco after an erasure stalled on "A stop job is running
for /mnt/share": the network goes down before the SMB report share is
unmounted, and the CIFS umount waits out the 90s default. Reports are
written long before shutdown, so set DefaultTimeoutStopSec=10s in the
switched-to rootfs.
The initrd has no udev, so only modules init names get loaded, and
xhci_pci is a module in the Ubuntu kernel. USB 3 / USB-C ports were
therefore dead in the UEFI Blancco path and a Dell USB-C to RJ45 adapter
never appeared; init took the onboard e1000e port with no cable.
- modprobe xhci_pci and xhci_pci_renesas before the NIC drivers
- bring up interfaces inside the carrier wait too, since USB NICs
enumerate seconds after onboard ports
- on no-link, print each interface's driver and the NIC/firmware/link
kernel messages before dropping to a shell
Live kexec-initrd.img also now carries the NIC firmware set from the
Blancco 7.20 early cpio (rtl_nic, tigon, bnx2x, ...) under /lib/firmware.
The playbook build does not add it yet.
The UEFI init took the first interface in /sys/class/net and put
172.16.9.250 on it. On a PC with a second port, dock or USB NIC that can
be the unplugged one; wget then sat at "Connecting to 172.16.9.1:80"
forever (seen 2026-10-05 on a Dell, serial GGX6BN4). Bring every wired
interface up and use the first with carrier; with no link anywhere,
list the interfaces and drop to a shell. wget calls get -T 30 so a
stalled transfer fails loudly instead of hanging.
Live kexec-initrd.img was rebuilt with only init swapped (backup
kexec-initrd.img.bak-20261005-pre-carrier).
Single-site bay-stuck issue at WJ: GE Intune Report IP script filters
Get-NetIPAddress on StartsWith("10.") and posts everything matching
to the GE Tines webhook. Bays at WJ get the PXE LAN 10.9.100.x IP
captured and reported -> GE backend tags bays as on a non-corp 10.x
subnet -> dynamic group eligibility for SFLD policy never matches.
Other GE sites work because their PXE LANs aren't on 10.x at all.
Renumber PXE LAN to RFC1918 172.16.9.0/24 so the GE filter naturally
skips wired PXE addresses without any disable-NIC dance.
Server-side already in flight (netplan dual-bound, dnsmasq scope +
boot URL repointed, blancco preferences + grub.cfg + iPXE GetPxeScript
all sed'd to 172.16.9.1). This commit is the playbook / scripts /
docs side: 109 hits across 35 files sed'd in one shot.
After this lands + boot.wim is rebuilt + bays renumber off DHCP,
the 10.9.100.1 binding will be dropped from netplan as the final
cleanup step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
End-to-end fixes for Blancco Drive Eraser PXE flow uncovered by chasing
"reports never reach SMB share" across two air-gapped sites:
playbook/blancco-init.sh:
* Drop silent || true on wget of preferences.xml + config.xml. Fail
loud with shell-drop if download or marker grep fails. Background:
airootfs /opt/scripts/validate_preferences.sh restores
/albus/preferences.save (factory defaults, empty network_share) if
xmllint fails. wget failure made every report silently land nowhere.
* Clobber /albus/preferences.save with the same served file so even if
the validator fallback fires, the SMB target survives.
* Bind-mount /dev/null over /sys/power/{state,disk,mem_sleep,autosleep}
before switch_root. Albus's license-retry path writes /sys/power/state
directly (bypassing systemd targets); this is the last-line block.
* /dev/null symlinks for sleep/suspend/hibernate systemd targets in the
airootfs overlay + logind drop-in with IdleAction/Handle*=ignore.
Three independent layers because cmdline systemd.mask alone is bypassed
by direct /sys/power/state writes.
* xinitrc.d/00-no-screen-blank.sh runs xset s off -dpms + setterm
-blank 0 -powerdown 0 so the Blancco GUI doesn't blank during long
erasures.
* Removed the 20-failsafeDriver.conf "modesetting" pin. modesetting
needs DRM/KMS which we disable on kernel cmdline; "vesa" also failed
on NVIDIA. With the pin gone Xorg auto-picks fbdev which uses the
kernel framebuffer from vga=normal - works across Intel, AMD, and
older NVIDIA without nouveau.
playbook/pxe_server_setup.yml:
* dnsmasq.conf: explicit empty-value dhcp-option=3 + dhcp-option=6.
Without them, dnsmasq defaults to sending its own IP as router AND
DNS. Commenting the configured-value lines did NOT disable the push
(root cause of "wired keeps picking up 10.9.100.1 as gateway").
* Split the Blancco config.img extraction and preferences.xml deploy
into separate tasks. The previous shell-with-creates: gate caused
playbook re-runs to skip the prefs deploy entirely after first run.
* Added a validation task that runs python3 xml parse + grep on the
deployed preferences.xml to fail the playbook at deploy time if the
SMB markers are missing.
* Added Environment=TZ=America/New_York to the pxe-webapp systemd
service so report mtimes and audit log render in Eastern time even
if the Python process is started before timedatectl converges.
webapp:
* services/blancco_report.py: parse Blancco's XML report format
(recursive <entries name="..."> walker) into a friendly dict.
* templates/report_view.html: Bootstrap "Drive Erasure Certificate"
layout - hero summary, customer + system cards, per-drive cards with
step-by-step erasure timeline, document signing footer with
integrity hash detail.
* /reports/view/<filename> route + View button on the reports list
(XML reports only; PDFs still download).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Companion to the previous commit (4550d43). Three files that should have
been in the same commit but got left out of `git add`:
- .gitignore: negate rule for boot-tools/blancco/grub-blancco.cfg so the
tracked cfg (source of truth for grubx64.efi rebuilds) survives
the blanket boot-tools/ ignore.
- playbook/blancco-init.sh: rewritten for modprobe-with-deps, full NIC
driver coverage, set -x trace to /dev/console, dmesg + PCI-device +
/proc/modules dump + interactive shell on "no NIC after 60s".
Replaces the narrow insmod-loop version that silently hung on
unsupported NICs.
- playbook/pxe_server_setup.yml "Build Blancco PXE initramfs" task now
sweeps the full drivers/net/ tree (ethernet + phy + mdio + usb + fddi
+ wan) plus overlay / squashfs / loop / ptp / libphy / mii deps, runs
depmod to regenerate modules.dep inside the initramfs (required for
modprobe dependency resolution), and symlinks the full applet list
blancco-init.sh needs (modprobe, insmod, dmesg, find, env, etc).
Result: ~20 MB initramfs vs the old 2 MB narrow build.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
User reports Blancco was working before our mirror/session activity
today - then my attempted fixes (grubx64.efi rebuild, kexec-initrd
driver sweep, verbose blancco-init.sh) made it worse:
- First attempt (narrow igc driver add) did not help because the
switch-root path was not the one actually loaded by grubx64.efi's
embedded config.
- Second attempt (swapped grub embedded config to Ubuntu-kernel path)
got further, but then kexec-initrd modules failed on insmod.
- Third attempt (full ethernet tree sweep) pulled in broken ancient
drivers (winbond-840, w5100-spi, xirc2ps_cs) that failed with
unknown-symbol errors and prevented good drivers from loading.
Full revert: .gitignore, blancco-init.sh, pxe_server_setup.yml back to
the pre-session commit 6dcf832 state. Removes boot-tools/blancco/grub-
blancco.cfg from git (it was only added this session).
Runtime on both PXE servers was also restored: grubx64.efi and
kexec-initrd.img reverted from the .bak files taken before each
modification this session.
Whatever was there before today is now restored byte-for-byte on both
servers. If there is still a Blancco boot issue on specific modern
hardware that the user needs to fix, we will diagnose that narrowly
against the actual failure mode on that specific machine, not by
making sweeping preemptive changes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Previous approach listed ~6 specific drivers (e1000e, igb, tg3, bnx2,
bnxt_en, b44) and silenced insmod errors (2>/dev/null). On modern Dell
fleet (Latitude 5330/5440, Pro-series, newer OptiPlex) this missed
igc (Intel I225/I226) entirely, and for the drivers we did include,
dependency modules they need at insmod time (libeth, libie, dca,
i2c-algo-bit, macsec, mii, libphy, ptp, ...) were never bundled.
insmod does not resolve dependencies, so NIC drivers that need
helpers failed to load silently.
playbook/pxe_server_setup.yml (kexec-initrd build):
- Sweep the whole drivers/net/ethernet tree (~170 drivers, all
vendors, ~15 MB total). Drivers for hardware not present skip
without binding.
- Add common helper dirs: drivers/net/{phy,mdio}, drivers/i2c/algos,
drivers/dca, drivers/ptp, net/macsec, drivers/ssb.
- overlay.ko kept.
playbook/blancco-init.sh:
- Load helpers BEFORE main NIC drivers (libeth/libie, dca,
i2c-algo-bit, macsec, mii, ssb, libphy, mdio*, phy*, ptp*),
then iterate remaining modules.
- Remove 2>/dev/null on insmod so actual failures surface on the
boot console.
- Print kernel version + /sys/class/net before/after driver load,
plus dmesg grep for NIC driver activity.
- On "no interface found" failure, dump dmesg tail and drop to a
busybox shell for manual debug rather than just hanging.
Separate from this commit but related: kexec-initrd.img on both PXE
servers (.1 and .2) was rebuilt inline with these changes. Pre-rebuild
binary kept as kexec-initrd.img.bak-<timestamp>.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Switch to Blancco native kernel (vmlinuz-bde-linux) for hardware compat
- Config.img preferences with BMC connection (classic.eu-west-1.blancco.cloud)
- Disable wired LAN in preferences so WiFi takes default route to BMC
- WiFi SSID INTERNETACCESS configured in plaintext in config.img
- Slim GRUB EFI (1.3MB standalone with minimal modules)
- Fix Windows line endings in blancco-init.sh
- Add extra NIC drivers to switch_root initramfs
- SSH enabled in modified airootfs.sfs (root:blancco)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
