[syslinux] Failing to get pxechain.com working, SYSLINUX 3.86.

[Gene Cumm]

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 21:15, Andrew Stuart <andrew at shopcusa.com> wrote:
> To start, I know I need to upgrade SYSLINUX, but since we are using the
> CMenu's it's not that easy of an upgrade. I have been (slowly) working on a
> new iPXE/pxelinux 4.04 install that I am migrating to.

cmenu rather than menu.c32/vesameu.c32?  Have you tried just
rebuilding it in the new version?

> However, I have an interesting problem. Using any of the examples I have
> seen, I can not make pxechain.com work.
>
> "pxechain.com ::/path/pxelinux.0"
> "pxechain.com ::path/pxelinux.0"
> "pxechain.com 192.168.1.12::/path/pxelinux.0"
> "pxechain.com 192.168.1.12::path/pxelinux.0"
>
> Having seen a thread where it appears pxechain.com is interchangeable, I
> tried the one from 4.04, with no difference.

The reason for this is that it only interprets the command line then
makes a PXE API call.

> I escape from my CMenu to the boot prompt:
>
> boot: pxechain.com 192.168.1.12::path/pxelinux.0
>
> and it appeared nothing happened, assuming it was a vmware issue, I tried on
> a few hardware based systems with the same results.

1) Could you reference "a few hardware based systems" (including
applicable BIOS/firmware)?

2) Which VMware product?  Which NIC?

3) Could you try without loading your CMenu system in case it's
corrupting something?

> Now, for the interesting part:  I got distracted, walked away for 15
> minutes, came back and found:
>
> boot: pxechain.com 192.168.1.12::path/pxelinux.0
> Could not find kernel image: 67.215.65.132::path/pxelinux.0
> boot:
> Booting from local disk ...
> (etc)
>
> I have repeated this with all the above examples, it takes roughly 10
> minutes before getting that response. in tftpd's xferlog nothing is logged
> until it gets the above, then it logs pxechain.com
>
> I'm running hpa's tftpd on FreeBSD 8.2 x86, this is an old working setup,
> all other apps working great, I just have one specific app that needs to be
> launched with it's own path, I have tested this specifically with pxelinux.0
> from 3.86/4.04 in path/ to verify it wasn't the programs fault. also server
> address is 192.168.1.12, and is not multihomed
>
> Now, 67.215.65.132 is opendns' landing page for all their redirects for
> invalid domains/etc. Anyone have any clues as to whats going wrong here? Why
> is opendns' landing page coming up? is pxechain attempting to do a dns
> lookup that is failing? I do have opendns' servers setup as
> forwarders for my local dns servers.
>
> I haven't tried to rebuild pxechain.com with debug support as I don't know
> anything about assembly, and I'm not sure compiling it under FreeBSD is
> going to work (assuming it should?!?!)..
>
> Besides sniffing/debug build of pxechain, any other suggestions? I will work
> on trying to get something setup to do this in case it's the only response.

Another is pxechn.c32.  I've implemented basic functionality however I
haven't received any feedback.  By default, it manipulates the
parameters in memory and loads the new NBP without the PXE RESTART
call but with an extra parameter can be a larger replacement for
pxechain.com.

-- 
-Gene