[syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

[Collins, Jeremy]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com 
> [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On Behalf Of Gene Cumm
> Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 2:24 PM
> To: For discussion of Syslinux and tftp-hpa
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62
> 
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 1:06 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> > On 01/11/2010 07:05 AM, Lindgren Daniel wrote:
> >>
> >> Any ideas?
> >>
> >
> > Since you have a working and a non-version version, it 
> would be useful 
> > if you could determine which prerelease broke things:
> >
> > 
> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/Obsolete/
> >
> > or, equivalently, if you're familiar with "git" you can do a "git 
> > bisect".  That would help immensely in narrowing down the problem.
> >
> 
> As a workaround, have you tried it without menu.c32?  It's 
> less convenient but might make a difference.  If so, you 
> could try a custom config just for the GX280s, using MAC or 
> UUID to recognize them.
> 
> -Workaround: Test older BIOS revisions with pxelinux.0 v3.62 
> or v3.84, assuming something else doesn't break.  Dell does 
> have most/all of them posted and you can read the release 
> notes in the Dell support site.
> 
> -Stay as you are at 3.61 but be careful mixing components 
> from different versions (I believe HPA warned about the 
> potential of issues at one point)
> 
> Learning to do a "git bisect" isn't too hard but does require reading.
>  It took me a few hours from knowing nothing about git to 
> being able to bisect and test for an issue with a GX620 
> running A11 in the exact same version slot (3.61 - 3.62).
> 
> --
> -Gene
> 
> "No one ever says, 'I can't read that ASCII E-mail you sent me.'"
> 
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> 

I can throw this out there to help your troubleshooting: At my work, we currently have 100s of Dell Optiplex GX280s with that same bios version working with the pxelinux.0 and vesamenu.c32 from version 3.75 (since about May 2009). I'm pretty sure we were using 3.62 or 3.63 for about a year before that but I can't be certain which. Whatever the problem your having is it probably not inherent solely to pxelinux.0 and all GX280s. I know its not much help, but its something. Jeremy Collins