[syslinux] Problem with Symantec's UNDI driver and PXELINUX

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Wed Jan 21 17:42:04 PST 2009


Brian H. Nelson wrote:
> 
> "Load undi driver failed with status code 0xC8"
> 
> After playing around with different versions of syslinux, it seems that 
> the driver works correctly with syslinux <= 3.63 and is broken with 
> syslinux >= 3.70. Note that we are NOT using the 'keeppxe' option (not 
> needed).
> 
> Could this be a bug in syslinux? I can provide the driver file if needed 
> (it's 27KB). It is their 'universal' driver and should work on any PXE 
> enabled NIC.
> 

I don't know what they do, but there definitely isn't a guaranteed way 
to load the UNDI driver once it has been removed from memory.  There are 
systems where it can be made to work, but it is definitely nothing that 
is guaranteed.

I know some of those systems rely on the UNDI stack still being present 
in memory, for example; others will try to read it out of the PCI ROM 
(which doesn't work for LOM or non-PCI systems.)

Status code 0xc5 is PXENV_STATUS_LOADER_BAD_UNDI_ROMID, which implies 
that it is trying to reinitialize UNDI from ROM somehow and failing.

Using the keeppxe option is the right way to do this kind of stuff; 
without knowing exactly what the Symantec driver is trying to do I have 
absolutely no idea how even begin to approach this.

I also note that you're asking here rather than asking Symantec...

	-hpa




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