[syslinux] PXE Booting linux on a Dell Poweredge SC1435

[Kevin Landreth]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
FYI, the 1435 is able to PXE with various versions of the BIOS in our
environment (orignaly pxelinux.0, now gpxelinux.0).  we have about 500 or so
of these machines.  So this wouldn't be a dell issue.

For debugingg, you could add "SAY ..." to the configuration file.

-- 
Kevin Landreth