[syslinux] tftp with pxelinux.0 from syslinux 4.10-pre17

[Shantanu Gadgil]

Hi Christian,

This is the exact same problem that I have faced for machines located across a few switches/routers ("far away" machines)

JFYI the "far away" machines were DELL 2850 and SunFire V20z grade machines.

When I tried to boot the "far away" machines things turned ugly real quick.
The loading of the kernel would time out, sometimes loading of the initrd would time out, sometimes nothing would load, even the transfer of pxelinux.0 would fail!!!

I would start seeing "failed sending ..." messages on the TFTP server for pxelinux.0 itself. Quite unnerving!!!

I quickly replaced the 4.10-pre17 (seventeen) files with the ones from 4.05 and things have been working since then.

The really scary (and unexplainable) bit was that even after replacing the 4.10-pre17 files with the 4.05 files, all the "far away" machines /still/ behaved "slow" for nearly two days. Now things are back to normal.

To test it in a contained manner, I setup a desktop grade machine right next to my TFTP server to see what happens. Details explained in a previous post titled "Please test 4.10-pre17".

(May be related) My search for similar problems lead me to a common topic called "TFTP logging strangeness" reported on various DNSMasq forums which matched what I was seeing on the TFTP server side.

All of the answers to those pointed out to buggy ROMS of the clients, but then how do things work for 4.05 ?!? (I am confused)

For now, I have NOT been able to retest the 4.10-pre17 due to workload/holidays. I plan to retest the 4.10-pre17 in the contained two-machine environment in the new year, to capture tcpdump logs.

Regards,
Shantanu

--- On Thu, 12/29/11, Christian Hesse <list at eworm.de> wrote:

> From: Christian Hesse <list at eworm.de>
> Subject: [syslinux] tftp with pxelinux.0 from syslinux 4.10-pre17
> To: "Syslinux" <syslinux at zytor.com>
> Date: Thursday, December 29, 2011, 1:25 PM
> Hello everybody,
> 
> setting up a netboot server for a really huge network I
> decided to go with
> what will be syslinux 4.10 to get support for http
> transfers.
> 
> The setup works on my notebook, booting another notebook
> directly connected.
> However it fails with a more complex setup: A virtual
> machine on the
> second notebook bridged to the ethernet device does not
> boot, systems from
> other networks with a router in between do not boot
> either.
> 
> The last message I can see on the clients is "Trying to
> load:
> pxelinux.cfg/<mac>". With tcpdump I can confirm there
> is a request
> for /pxelinux.cfg/<uid> (which is answered correctly
> with "no such file").
> But there is nothing about /pxelinux.cfg/<mac> in the
> logs (neither request
> nor answer).
> 
> This used to work perfectly with syslinux 4.05. Any ideas
> what could go wrong?
> 
> BTW, is there a git repo containing the latest code for
> syslinux pre 4.10?
> Could not find one so far.
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Chris
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