[syslinux] localboot in pxelinux recurses back into pxelinux then eventually crashes

[Vanush Misha Paturyan]

Hi All (and Gene)

My promise at the end of the last email (about "will test it today")
did not materialize. Only find time to do some testing today. Will keep
the all of the conversation in this email for people to be able to
catch up on the issue with just one email. More details at the end of
this email:

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:52:10 -0500 Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Nov 22, 2011 4:46 AM, "Vanush Misha" <misha at cs.nuim.ie> wrote:
> >
> > hi Gene,
> >
> > On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:26:08 -0500 Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 05:54, Vanush Misha <misha at cs.nuim.ie>
> > > wrote:
> > > > I did some more investigation: for me the "infinite loop" starts
> > > > when I move from version 3.84 to 3.85 (and not between 3.82 and
> > > > 3.83 as reported by Denie Andriessen). Are pre-releases of 3.85
> > > > available anywhere for download?
> > > >
> > > > What other debugging steps can I take to narrow this problem
> > > > down?
> > > >
> > > > Misha.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > Any chance you could try 4.04 or the current 4.05-pre release
> > > (currently 4.05-pre6;
> > > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/Testing/4.05/
> > > )? It comes precompiled so you only need to temporarily replace
> > > pxelinux.0 and the modules you use.
> >
> > I can confirm that both 4.04 and 4-05-pre6 loop back to initializing
> > network card and retrievint pxeboot.0 from tftp server again after
> > showing "Booting from local disk, PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PXE
> > ROM. " lines. Will go through 3.85 pre-releases later today.
> >
> > Misha
> 
> Tried LOCALBOOT 0 and -1?  This sounds similar by symptom but is
> different enough that knowing the make/model, BIOS, and whether the
> NIC in question is built-in (LoM; LAN on motherboard)?
> 

I just tested 4.10-pre17, and the problem still exists. System boots
perfectly if my pxelinux.cfg/<config> file specifies "kernel " and
"append " commands, but goes into a loop if I am trying to do
"LOCALBOOT -1", after spitting out "Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM". After
third or forth iteration a message "It appears your computer has only
271K of low ("DOS") RAM." After few more iterations computer freezes up.

The hardware is IBM System x3550 [797841Y], network card is an on-board
dual-head Broadcom BCM5715C Ethernet Controller, with first port shared
with the BMC controller. All tests are carried out on the first port. 

The Broadcom reports its boot agent as "Broadcom NetXtreme II Ethernet
Boot Agent v2.8.5"

Going through 3.85_pre versions, the problem was introduced in
3.85_pre10.

Don't know if the following two lines are helpful or not:
!PXE entry point found (we hope) at 957A:00D6 via plan A
UNDI code segment at 957A len 4964
UNDI data segment at 8FAA len 5D00

Thanks for the great work on syslinux suite.

Misha
-- 
Vanush "Misha" Paturyan
Senior Technical Officer
Room 1.37
Computer Science Department
NUI Maynooth
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