[syslinux] pxelinux.0 fails when ip address matchs nnn.nnn.nnn.n0n.

[Steve Traylen]

Hi

 First we are using pxelinux.0 from syslinux-2.09 and out hardware is
 from lspci

 03:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 
      82541EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)

 We booted some 200 machines successfully over the last few days
 using pxelinux.0 and a root over NFS that requires kernel level 
 IP configuration.

 The only failures were hosts with IP address

 >  lcg0469.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.100
 >  lcg0470.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.101
 >  lcg0471.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.102
 >  lcg0472.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.103
 >  lcg0473.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.104
 >  lcg0474.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.105
 >  lcg0475.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.106
 >  lcg0476.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.107
 >  lcg0477.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.108
 >  lcg0478.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.109
 >
 >  lcg0569.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.200
 >  lcg0570.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.201
 >  lcg0571.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.202
 >  lcg0572.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.203
 >  lcg0573.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.204
 >  lcg0574.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.205
 >  lcg0575.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.206
 >  lcg0576.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.207
 >  lcg0577.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.208
 >  lcg0578.gridpp.rl.ac.uk  130.246.182.209

 if we take the second one above as an example what happened 
 was that the NIC requested the correct IP address (130.246.182.101)
 from the DHCP.

 pxelinux.0 printed out that the hosts IP was 

 82F6B665, 130.246.182.11

 While the hex number is correct the IP address is wrong and 0 was
 stripped out. This happened for all other hosts matching nnn.nnn.nnn.n0n.

 We were using

 default linux
 
label linux
  kernel lcfg/kernelboot-2.4.20-20.7
  ipappend 1
  append root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=.... 

 This then caused a failure since the ipappend put a ip= with the wrong
 address on the kernel.

 Changing to 

label linux
  kernel lcfg/kernelboot-2.4.20-20.7
  append root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=....  ip=dhcp

and now everything is working for fine for us. We have a work around but 
I thought I would report the problem we saw as I'm interested in what is 
going on. I guess pxelinux.0 interrogating the NIC is going wrong somewhere.

 Steve


-- 
Steve Traylen
s.traylen at rl.ac.uk
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/