[syslinux] PXE Booting linux on a Dell Poweredge SC1435

[Gene Cumm]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 4:50 AM, Erwan Velu <erwan at seanodes.com> wrote:
> Etienne Le Sueur wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm trying to boot via TFTP using PXE, and it gets an IP, and "TFTP ."
>> flashes before disappearing, and the machine hangs.
>>
>> This TFTP server and DHCP setup is known to work with many other
>> machines.
>>
>> Can anyone help me debug this problem?
>>
>> What can I do to make the pxe output more verbose?
>>
> What version of pxelinux are you using ? Could you give the 3.74-pre11 a
> try ?
> Could you show your configuration file ?
> Does your bios is up to date ?
>

Which network card?  Is it one of the two onboards?  Have you tried
the first onboard NIC?  Dell normally labels the first as "1" and the
second as "2".  What PXE ROM version?  Often times there are at least
two versions listed, one of them is the ROM's version, the other is
its PXE stack version.  All versions may prove useful.

What does the TFTP server say in its logs?  How much gets loaded?  Is
it able to load all of pxelinux.0 and the real config file?

Have you tried booting from the network card on a network that has
DHCP services but no boot services?

If the config auto-boots without a prompt, try changing it to dump to
a prompt with at least a reasonable delay, like 10-60 seconds or more,
or preferably no timeout delay at all.  It could be a problem with the
default choice running quickly and crashing.

-Gene