[syslinux] Very slow download with pxelinux > 4.07 on specific hardware

[Eric PEYREMORTE]

I did some additional tests :

On a dell optiplex 380, i disabled internal nic, added a 3com 905c tx 
external pci nic : very slow too.
On a dell 740(which is always fast), i put the 3com to be sure : very fast.

So it seems it is not related to the nic itself. To be sure it wasn't 
just one failing computer i tested several 380.

I tried disabling several features in bios, like Execute Disable, 
multicore support, speedstep... Nothing helped.

I thought at the beginning it was an efi problem (althought i use it in 
bios mode), but on optiplex 7010 which is efi based too, i don't have 
the problem...

I used 6.03pre2 for this test.

As i said previously no problem before version 5.00.

Cheers

Le 24/02/2014 22:28, Eric PEYREMORTE a écrit :
> Yes on optiplex 790 i upgraded from A07 to A18 (there was a nic 
> upgrade) but it didn't change anything..
>
> On optiplex 380 i upgraded from bios A01 to A07(don't know if upgrade 
> contained pxe or not)...
>
> I tried, lpxelinux.0 and it wasn't faster.
>
> Only v4.07 helped on these machines.
>
> Tomorrow, i will give a try with 6.03pre2.
>
> In wireshark, i saw no errors, the packet length was the same on a 
> fast and a slow machine, the
> only thing that changed was the number of packet per second. I didn't 
> measure exactly, but when
> a fast machine was receiving a tftp packet each 0.003 second, the slow 
> one did each 0.02 s.
>
> I can send you a wireshark trace if you want.
>
> I know it's not easy for you to help remotely, so is there any trace i 
> can produce ?
> some option to make it more verbose ? I saw debug.c32, but it seems to 
> intervene later in the process.
>
> Cheers,
> Eric
> ps : sorry for my bad english :-(
>
>
>
> Le 24/02/2014 18:16, Gene Cumm a écrit :
>> On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Eric PEYREMORTE
>> <eric.peyremorte at iut-valence.fr> wrote:
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> We had to setup a pxelinux on a new server (windows 2012) and used the
>>> latest release of pxelinux 6.0.2.
>>>
>>> Everything went ok on my first client test machine : dell optiplex 
>>> 740. Pxe
>>> was really fast (vesamenu with large background image was appearing 
>>> in less
>>> than 3 secondes)
>>>
>>> But on different client machine i got different results :
>>>
>>> On optiplex 790 (core i5 with intel 82579 nic) and 380 (core 2 duo 
>>> with bcm
>>> 57xx), it takes 1 minute for the menu to appear.
>>>
>>> On  optiplex 7010(core i5 92579lm), it is as fast as with optiplex 740.
>>>
>>> At the beginning i thought it was because my newer machine were on 
>>> an efi
>>> bios, but the 7010 is too and i have no problem(i always use legacy 
>>> boot).
>>>
>>> With pxelinux 4.0.7, everything is running smooth. I think i'll 
>>> stick with
>>> this version. But i think i'm loosing some interesting features...
>>>
>>> Any clue ?
>> Have you checked if any BIOS/Firmware updates the PXE OROM on these
>> systems?  6.03-pre2 was just released last night and may also be worth
>> testing.  lpxelinux.0 uses lwIP instead of the traditional API calls
>> and might be another point worth testing.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Syslinux mailing list
> Submissions to Syslinux at zytor.com
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
>
>


-- 
Eric PEYREMORTE
Technicien Informatique - CRI
http://www.iut-valence.fr
T: 04.75.41.88.37