[syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

Collins, Jeremy Collins_Jeremy at sccollege.edu
Tue Jan 12 08:43:28 PST 2010


> -----Original Message-----
> From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com 
> [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On Behalf Of Lindgren Daniel
> Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 3:20 AM
> To: For discussion of Syslinux and tftp-hpa
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62
> 
> 
> > 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
> 
> I tried switching to vesamenu.c32 (from 3.84) and all I got 
> was a blank screen on my GX280 and on a VMWare ESX 4.0 
> virtual machine it stopped at loading default. Tried reducing 
> the default file to just this:
> 
> UI vesamenu.c32
> PROMPT 0
> TOTALTIMEOUT 9000
> ONTIMEOUT BOOTHD
> 
> MENU TITLE PXE menu
> MENU MASTER PASSWD <removed>
> 
> LABEL 14b
>     MENU LABEL Windows XP, DHCP
>     KERNEL memdisk
>     APPEND keeppxe initrd=images/install/w98_aterm_xp_current.IMZ
> 
> Still just a blank screen/no loading. Changed back to 
> menu.c32 (3.61) and everything worked as it should.
> 
> Cheers,
> Daniel
> 

I'm a little unclear from your response about something. When you
changed versions did you change all 3 pieces (pxelinux.0, memdisk, and
vesamenu.c32/menu.c32) each time so that when you tested all the pieces
were from the same the version? If you didn't can you try doing that;
mismatched versions don't usually play well together. Also I doubt it's
the BIOS version, even though it's the newest advailable it was released
in 2006 so it is actually older than the syslinux version. I'm fairly
certain our machines would have had that bios version when we were using
3.6x (and probably earlier realeases). Jeremy




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