[syslinux] Syslinux 4.04 gpxelinux.0 http performance problem with VMware VMs

Gene Cumm gene.cumm at gmail.com
Mon May 7 18:53:35 PDT 2012


On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 4:40 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik at iki.fi> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In my testing environment I have two VMs on ESXi 5.0.
>
> VM A = dhcp/tftp/PXE/http server, running CentOS 6.2. Syslinux 4.04 with the included gpxelinux.0.
> VM B = PXE boot client.

> Any ideas what's causing the bad performance and those continuous retransmits?
> Anything I should try to debug this?
>
> On baremetal with Intel NICs I've seen much better gpxelinux.0 download speeds over http.

Syslinux 4.04 is obsolete and probably not worth debugging.  4.05 is
current and 4.10-pre20 is a beta with lwIP, a lightweight IP stack,
eliminating the need for gPXE if you only want HTTP downloads.  I've
already been testing 4.10-pre* in VMware VMs with success after my
patch.  I've seen a solid 45-70 MB/s after that patch on VMware VMs.

If I recall correctly, the issue you notice is actually how that
version of gPXE talks with the VMware VM PXE stack.

-- 
-Gene




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