[syslinux] Followup to "pxe weirdness" in syslinux archives

Fri Sep 29 06:33:42 PDT 2006

The machine I'm trying to boot is on a VMWare ESX 2.5 server. I'm using 
dhcrelay on a CentOS box (dhcp-3.0.1-58.EL4) on the same subnet to forward 
requests to my DHCP server on a Gentoo box (dhcp-3.0.3). I'm running 
atftp-0.7 on it as well. I don't see any connections to the tftp server 
but I suspect that's because it's trying to use the dhcrelay server as the 
default gateway since that's what shows up first in the gateway IP output 
on the client.

Here's what booting the PXE client looks like. 10.196.7.98 is the dhcrelay 
machine, 10.196.1.21 is the DHCP server, 10.196.4.1 is the default gateway 
for this subnet:

Network boot from AMD Am79C970A
Copyright (C) 2003-2004  VMware, Inc.
Copyright (C) 1997-2000  Intel Corporation

CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 50 56 89 6D 76  GUID: 
50092B9F-4F48-FF9F-2521-A1752E810D25
CLIENT IP: 10.196.7.97  MASK: 255.255.252.0  DHCP IP: 10.196.1.21
GATEWAY IP: 10.196.7.98  10.196.4.1
PXE-E32: TFTP open timeout

And here's my DHCP configuration:

# dhcpd.conf
#

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
ddns-update-style none;
#deny client-updates;
option domain-name "corp.checkfree.com";
option domain-name-servers 10.132.1.130, 10.132.1.131;

default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

# If this DHCP server is the official DHCP server for the local
# network, the authoritative directive should be uncommented.
authoritative;

# Use this to send dhcp log messages to a different log file (you also
# have to hack syslog.conf to complete the redirection).
log-facility local7;

allow bootp;
allow booting;

# Jumpstart Support
option space SUNW;
option SUNW.root-mount-options code 1 = text;
option SUNW.root-server-ip-address code 2 = ip-address;
option SUNW.root-server-hostname code 3 = text;
option SUNW.root-path-name code 4 = text;
option SUNW.swap-server-ip-address code 5 = ip-address;
option SUNW.swap-file-path code 6 = text;
option SUNW.boot-file-path code 7 = text;
option SUNW.posix-timezone-string code 8 = text;
option SUNW.boot-read-size code 9 = unsigned integer 16;
option SUNW.install-server-ip-address code 10 = ip-address;
option SUNW.install-server-hostname code 11 = text;
option SUNW.install-path code 12 = text;
option SUNW.sysid-config-file-server code 13 = text;
option SUNW.JumpStart-server code 14 = text;
option SUNW.terminal-name code 15 = text;

# PXE Support
#option space PXE;
#option PXE.mtftp-ip code 1 = ip-address;
#option PXE.mtftp-cport code 2 = unsigned integer 16;
#option PXE.mtftp-sport code 3 = unsigned integer 16;
#option PXE.mtftp-tmout code 4 = unsigned integer 8;
#option PXE.mtftp-delay code 5 = unsigned integer 8;
#option PXE.discovery-control code 6 = unsigned integer 8;
#option PXE.boot-server code 8 = { unsigned integer 16,
#                                  unsigned integer 8,
#                                  ip-address };
#option PXE.boot-menu code 9 = { unsigned integer 16,
#                                unsigned integer 8,
#                                text};
#option PXE.menu-prompt code 10 = { unsigned integer 8, text };

subnet 10.196.0.0 netmask 255.255.252.0 {
        range 10.196.3.1 10.196.3.200;
        option broadcast-address 10.196.3.255;
        option routers 10.196.1.1;
}

subnet 10.196.4.0 netmask 255.255.252.0 {
        range 10.196.5.3 10.196.5.200;
        option broadcast-address 10.196.7.255;
        option routers 10.196.4.1;
}

# Jumpstart configurations for Sun servers
group {
        vendor-option-space SUNW;
        option SUNW.JumpStart-server "cldmonitor:/jumpstart/9";
        option SUNW.install-server-hostname "cldmonitor";
        option SUNW.install-server-ip-address 10.196.1.21;
        option SUNW.install-path "/jumpstart/9/install";
        option SUNW.root-server-hostname "cldmonitor";
        option SUNW.root-server-ip-address 10.196.1.21;
        option SUNW.root-path-name 
"/jumpstart/9/install/Solaris_9/Tools/Boot";
        next-server 10.196.1.21;

        host watsupsun01 {
                hardware ethernet 8:0:20:d2:40:eb;
                fixed-address 10.196.2.214;
                option host-name "watsupsun01.corp.checkfree.com";
                option SUNW.sysid-config-file-server 
"cldmonitor:/jumpstart/9/config";
        }
}

group {
        next-server 10.196.1.21;        # TFTP server to boot from
        filename "pxelinux.0";          # Name of the bootloader program

        host iwdtmp01 {
                hardware ethernet 00:50:56:89:6d:76;
                fixed-address 10.196.7.97;
        }
}

William J O'Neill
Configuration Engineer/Sys Administrator
wjoneill at checkfree.com
Phone: 678-375-4453

CheckFree. The Company that Powers Payment on the WebSM.
http://www.checkfree.com/paybillsonline

"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> 
09/27/2006 05:08 PM

To
wjoneill at checkfree.com
cc
syslinux at zytor.com
Subject
Re: [syslinux] Followup to "pxe weirdness" in syslinux archives

wjoneill at checkfree.com wrote:
> I'm running across the same weirdness mentioned in the "pxe weirdness" 
> thread in the archives: 
> http://syslinux.zytor.com/archives/2003-July/002229.html
> 
> I couldn't find any followups to the issue. Was it a misconfiguration 
> error? My setup is similar to James': I'm attempting to do a PXE install 

> using DHCP sent via dhcrelay. I get the right IP, netmask, etc. but get 
> two gateway IPs in the order of dhcrelay_ip default_gateway_ip.
> 

Could you please describe *exactly* what you see on the screen, what 
hardware you're using, versions of all relevant components, and anything 
you get in the logs on the tftp server and/or sniffed packets?

                 -hpa