[syslinux] PXE, Intel, and FC4 problems

Luciano Rocha strange at nsk.no-ip.org
Wed Aug 1 10:29:14 PDT 2007


On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 09:28:17AM -0700, Kevin G. J. Freels wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> I am currently building a PXE distro server for a company that I'm 
> contracting for, but I'm having some problems. Here's the scoop:
> 
> Some of the clients I want to install on are Angstrom blades with Intel 
> e1000 NICs. Using the pxelinux.0 file on the FC6 distro, I can install 
> FC6 just fine. However, FC4 bombs. The system pulls it's DHCP address 
> just fine, and then loads the kernel and initrd.img. However, at that 
> point, the NIC goes dead, and the install then requests the CDROM and/or 
> user input for the rest of the install (defeating the purpose of the 
> unattended install). As I said, the FC6 install works just fine.
> 
> After many hours of research, I summised that the e1000 drivers buried 
> in the FC4 initrd are downrev'd for that card, so I tried a *bunch* of 
> things to get this to work:
> 
> -- Downloaded and built the latest e1000 driver and added to the initrd 
> for FC4, wouldn't load, same result,
> 
> -- Tried using the FC6 vmlinuz/initrd (also FC5), wouldn't work because 
> the FC6 install moved to yum and the trees are different,
> 
> -- Built new vmlinuz kernel with the e1000 driver built in, but it came 
> back on the load as "Invalid or corrupt kernel" (needs to be an 
> x86_boot_sector image and not a UNIX ELF executable, how do you build 
> *that*?),
> 
> -- Tried the FC6 pxelinux.0, but was dumped back to the CRDOM prompt again.
> 
> After a week and a half of trying everything but waving a dead chicken, 
> one of my co-workers found a way to load the FC4 image, and then load 
> the new e1000 driver manually, but, again, this defeats the purpose of 
> the unattended install. My FC4 PXE install works just fine for the 
> Broadcom NIC.

1. Expand the FC4 initrd (it should be a compressed ext2 image or a
compressed cpio archive);
2. Expand the file modules/modules.cgz. It's a compressed cpio archive;
3. Replace the original e1000 driver with the one that works;
4. re-create the file modules.cgz (cpio -Hnewc | gzip > modules.cgz);
5. re-create the initrd;
6. save the new iso or replace the initrd in the tftp server.

-- 
lfr
0/0
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/attachments/20070801/0aad0d85/attachment.sig>


More information about the Syslinux mailing list