[syslinux] pxelinux problem

[Eric P. McCoy]

Hi.  I'm hoping that someone on this list can help me with my
problem.  I've been looking on my own for a question for the past few
hours at least, so hopefully this isn't just a FAQ.

Anyhow, my problem is simple (to describe).  The NIC's boot agent gets
an IP address (verified with dhcpd), gets the pxelinux boot image and
correct configuration file (verified with tftpd), and then immediately
does a hard reset.  This all takes much less than a second, which
doesn't give me a whole lot of time to read whatever messages might be
showing up.  All I can see is that the screen is filled about 2/3 way
down before the reset.

Here are the relevant portions of the tftpd log:

  tftpd[593]: providence: read request for //pxelinux.0: success
  tftpd[595]: providence: read request for //pxelinux.cfg/C0A80101: success

Note that it's not trying to load the kernel image at all.  It did
occur to me that this might be one of the tftpd-related problems
mentioned in the docs, but unfortunately, the docs are extremely thin
on what non-Linux tftpds _do_ work correctly (presumably because you
don't know).  Since my boot server runs FreeBSD, I'm afraid I can't
use either of the options the docs mention as being known to work
correctly.  My choices appear to be yale-tftpd-3.0 (the one I'm using
now) and utftpd-0.2.4.  The man page says nothing on the subject
(blocksize and such), and I don't know how else I would find out if my
tftpd supports it.  It seems like a hard reset with no error message
and no delay (regardless of what I say in the configuration file) is
pretty extreme for an error condition anyway, which makes me think
this might be a bug of some kind.

Regarding hardware compatibility and possible brokenness, I have an
eepro100+ with the onboard PXE boot ROM version 0.99.  It actually
works quite well with the FreeBSD pxeboot image, but I'd rather go
back to Linux.

Is there anything else I can check?

-- 
Eric McCoy (reverse "ten.xoc at mpe", mail to "ctr2sprt" is filtered)

"Last I checked, it wasn't the power cord for the Clue Generator that
was sticking up your ass."	- John Novak, rasfwrj