[syslinux] Odd problem with pxelinux

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Wed Oct 15 10:05:03 PDT 2003


Jimmy Hedman wrote:
> We encountar a somewhat odd problem. We use pxelinux to boot a linux
> cluster and when we reboot all 103 of the nodes some of the won't start
> since the tftp-servere looses the arp-entry _between_ it downloads the
> pxelinux.0 and the config file! pxelinux doesn't seem to answer the
> arp-requests either in this phase.

This isn't a very long phase... and PXE will unfortunately only answer 
ARP while it is either sending or trying to receive a packet.  However, 
I find it extremely odd that you would see failure due to a window that 
usually amounts only a few milliseconds.  There are other delays which 
would seem much more severe.

> We run linux 2.4.22 on the tftp-server which also is dhcp-server and
> nfs-server.
> 
> Is this som known issue with the linux kernel or pxelinux?

PXELINUX, or perhaps better said, it's a known issue with PXE.

	-hpa




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