[syslinux] chainbooting pxe servers stalls

Sean Mitchuson smitchuson at murraystate.edu
Tue Sep 11 05:07:41 PDT 2012


I've been trying out newer (4.04 and 4.05) releases and older (3.85, 2.11)
and nothing seems to be fixing my issue.

I had an interesting issue with 4.05 in that it didn't boot, but it did
seem to cause the cursor to bounce all around the screen of the machine
trying to access the other pxe server.

I'm still a little fuzzy on the networking side of things but:
My main pxe server is setup to be the default network boot device by my
networking staff, that way any device that tries to boot off the network
will see it.
I then have 3 other pxe servers that I could point to (along with other
choices for booting directly into OS installs)
1.) a Satellite PXE server
2.) a Spacewalk PXE server
3.) an IBM firmware upgrade PXE server.

Since I'm already network booting all these servers off of my main PXE I
shouldn't have to have any special rules setup just to point the machines
to these other PXE servers right?

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Shantanu Gadgil
<shantanugadgil at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
>
> --- On Mon, 9/10/12, Sean Mitchuson <smitchuson at murraystate.edu> wrote:
>
> > From: Sean Mitchuson <smitchuson at murraystate.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [syslinux] chainbooting pxe servers stalls
> > To: "For discussion of Syslinux and tftp-hpa" <syslinux at zytor.com>
> > Date: Monday, September 10, 2012, 10:04 PM
> > That's exactly what I think my
> > problem is and I'm currently working on
> > fixing it.
> >
> > I will reply again with my findings.  Thank you.
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Sep 10, 2012 11:09 AM, "Sean Mitchuson" <smitchuson at murraystate.edu
> >
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I've started using pxe servers for OS deployment
> > at my organization and
> > > I'm
> > > > trying to get chainbooting working but I seem to
> > run into an issue that
> > > > causes a hard lock up of a system.
> > > >
> > > > MENU BEGIN ^1. Boot Satellite PXE
> > > >         LABEL
> > Satellite PXE
> > > >         KERNEL
> > pxechain.com
> > > >         APPEND
> > (Server IP Address)::pxelinux.0
> > > > Is part of my config file for my main pxe server
> > to boot over to the
> > > > satellite based pxe server but when I choose this
> > option I see
> > > > TFTP boot: (server ip address) pxelinux.0 and it
> > locks up the machine and
> > > I
> > > > have to hard reset it.
> > > >
> > > > So I'm not sure where you start troubleshooting.
> > >
> > > For each server, what version of PXELINUX and where did
> > you obtain the
> > > binaries?  Did you build them yourself?
> > >
> > > Could
> > >
> > >
> http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Common_Problems#PXE_Calls_in_4.00-4.03apply
> > > (for the source PXELINUX)?
> > >
> > > If not, could you describe the machines you've tested
> > with?  Make, model,
> > > BIOS revision/version?  If not using an onboard
> > NIC with the BIOS's PXE
> > > OROM, please describe the NIC and the PXE stack you're
> > using.
>
> Hello Sean,
>
> I think I have a similar setup except I just use satellite DHCP (PXE)
> servers which only need the subnet specific info (IP, router) and the IP of
> the TFTP server.
> This reduces the overhead of having too many files per satellite server.
> I use dnsmasq as the satellite DHCP/PXE server, which just redirects any
> PXE booting machine to the main (only) TFTP server.
>
> Further installation continues from the TFTP server only.
>
> I had to do this as DHCP forwarding has been disabled on the intermediate
> router (I presume yours could be a similar case?!?)
>
> Anyway, be wary of the 4.10preXXX builds as they tend to show symptoms
> like you have described.
> The 4.06pre11 work fine on my setup (which I am currently using).
>
> Regards,
> Shantanu
>
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-- 
Sean Mitchuson
Linux Systems Administrator
Murray State University
Murray, Ky 42071
Phone: 270.809.5756

 "MSU Information Systems staff will NEVER ask for your password or other
confidential information via email."



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