[syslinux] Strange behavior

[Gene Cumm]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 08:42, Roy Marantz <roy.marantz at vonage.com> wrote:
> I'd like to apologize for the tone of my message.  If you are generous,
> chalk it up to being caused by my frustration with this issue.

Same here (hence the desire to just start fresh).

> I've done more testing and I agree with you that the issue is due to
> something in the networks involved in my setup.  I've tried using a VM on
> other networks and had everything work as expected.  I will be looking into
> that with our networking group.

I'd call that good news/bad news.  Good that you have a direction; bad
that there's something still failing.  I'd still be curious at a
packet capture, more to make sure gPXE and PXELINUX are behaving as
expected, in light of the underlying networking issue (retries and
all).

> Sorry to have wasted your time and I really do appreciate all the time and
> effort you put into this.

I don't think I'd consider it a waste.  Personally, I enjoy diagnosing
issues, especially when I can find a direction on the issue and
resolve it successfully.

> I do believe that a nice enhancement to the open file (or file download
> code) would be for it to not try fallback extensions when a know extension
> is specified as part of the filename or at least strip the known extension
> first.  If I had an idea where to implement such a change I would send in a
> patch for that change.

Definitely a thought, especially when the filename is from a config
(which is supposed to have full filenames and not need the fallback
mechanism).

> I'd appreciate hearing any suggestions for how to eliminate any of the
> downloads (gpxelinux, menu.pl, menu.c32, menu.pl) that my current procedure
> uses.  I know that I can tell Vmware to use gpxelinux.0 in place of it
> native pxe code, but I need to check on the supportability of that.  I.e.
> Will Vmware balk at supporting such a change.  I was hoping to eliminate the
> 2nd menu.pl download.

I don't believe you can tell a VM to use alternate code very easily,
especially gpxelinux.0 (which depends on the underlying UNDI) or a VM
on ESXi.  The best suggestion I can think of is replacing the first
config file with a tiny static config that does something like "UI
menu.c32 menu.pl".  Transfer/parsing would be mildly faster and your
httpd might also be a little faster (but probably not enough to really
notice).

> Again, thanks for all you help.
> Roy

You're welcome.

-- 
-Gene