[syslinux] pxelinux.0 hangs after it is downloaded.

[David T. Pheasant]

Hello Everyone,

    In short, I have the following questions:
        Is there a known problem with PXE booting and LinuxBIOS?
        Will pxelinux.0 not work with a serial console?
        Is there a way to convert pxelinux.0 into an ELF file?

The Long Version:
    I am working on installing Rocks Cluter distribution on a LinuxNetworx cluster. The hardware was donated to my college, and the CS department is trying to get it running using Open Source Software only. There are three things that have been making my life difficult:
    -Nodes have no CD-Rom, Floppy, or Graphics (Only outside connections are ethernet and serial console)
    -Nodes have old version of etherboot which does not support PXE
    -Nodes use LinuxBIOS and not a traditional PC BIOS
   

Obviously, because the nodes have no CD-Rom or floppy drives, network booting is my only option. I have resolved the second point by chain booting etherboot. The old version downloads an ELF formatted version of Etherboot 5.2 which has ELF, PXE and NBI support. My problem is that when I tell the 5.2 version to load pxelinux.0 it downloads the file and then just sits there. If I tell it to boot an ELF formatted memtest86 the file is downloaded and executed perfectly, which makes me think that the LinuxBIOS has some problem with the PXE file format. Is this true?

The nodes also use a serial console. There is no graphics card installed. Is this a problem for PXE? I have added the console=ttyS0,96008n1 to the append line in /tftpboot/pxelinux/pxelinux.cfg/default file but that made no difference.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you,

-David