[syslinux] IPMI serial over lan disconnects seem to trigger extlinux reboots

[Andrew J. Schorr]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 01:41:29PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 11/12/2013 01:22 PM, Andrew J. Schorr wrote:
> > I am using 4.05 because that's what's packaged in the latest Fedora
> > release (Fedora 19 in my case).  I wonder why they are using such an
> > old version.  I will take a look at how difficult it would be to build
> > the latest version on Fedora.

FYI, it is not so easy to package for Fedora.  I see there is an open
bug to get this upgraded:

   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=869540

> One possibility is that either the PXE stack or the BMC uses memory that
> it shouldn't.  Try setting a mem= option with less memory than you
> actually have and see if that changes things.

That's an interesting idea.  I may give that a try.  Just to be clear,
are you talking here about the kernel "mem=" boot parameter, as documented
in kernel-parameters.txt?

        mem=nn[KMG]     [KNL,BOOT] Force usage of a specific amount of memory
                        Amount of memory to be used when the kernel is not able
                        to see the whole system memory or for test.
                        [X86] Work as limiting max address. Use together
                        with memmap= to avoid physical address space collisions.
                        Without memmap= PCI devices could be placed at addresses
                        belonging to unused RAM.

I wonder if that has negative implications for subsequent system performance...

I also think I had the same troubles booting into memtest, so it may be
a more general problem.

Probably the best solution would be to replace these machines with newer
ones, but that will be painful since they are in the field.

Thanks,
Andy