[syslinux] DELL E6510 pxelinux issues

[Philipp Hahn]

Hello,

I have a problem with our DELL E6510 notebooks (BIOS version A05):

1. After the update from syslinux-3.71 to 4.02 LOCALBOOT no longer
works. I've read
<http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#LOCALBOOT_on_Dell_Latitude_E6400>
and neither version works. The behavior differs between the laptop
rebooting automatically and getting stuck.
I checked all versions up to 6.02, which finally makes it work again
thanks to 398cee85e1835b77e1b83a01fc20587bee8cc578 "PXELINUX: implement
our own version of local_boot16".
Good.

2. But since syslinux-5.10 the TFTP is very slow: Loading a 3 MiB Linux
kernel and 72 MiB InitRD now takes 43s+16m instead of 1s+30s.
Using syslinux-5.01 is the last version being fast, but all versions
since 4.00 show file corruption: Loading the Linux kernel succeeds, but
the the ext3 file system in the InitRD has errors.

3. I've updated the BIOS to A09, then A10, and now A15 as A10 claims to
have "Updated the PXE option ROM to version 1.3.76". The boot message
lists "Intel Boot Agent GE v1.3.81 with A15. This did not improve the
situation: the InitRD still gets corrupted.
(There's also an A16, but version numbers of several components is lower
than in A15. WTF?)

Running "tcpdump -s 65535 'host ... or ether host ...'" only shows a
larger gap between two consecutive TFTP requests:

3.86: fast, works

4.07: fast, sometimes corrupt, broken localboot
> 14:27:50.322512 IP dell.phahn.dev.49153 > xen12.phahn.dev.49886: UDP, length 4
> 14:27:50.322588 IP xen12.phahn.dev.49886 > dell.phahn.dev.49153: UDP, length 1412
> 14:27:50.323114 IP dell.phahn.dev.49153 > xen12.phahn.dev.49886: UDP, length 4
> 14:27:50.323193 IP xen12.phahn.dev.49886 > dell.phahn.dev.49153: UDP, length 1412

5.01: fast, corrupt, broken localboot
> 14:26:27.999200 IP dell.phahn.dev.49155 > xen12.phahn.dev.48338: UDP, length 4
> 14:26:27.999276 IP xen12.phahn.dev.48338 > dell.phahn.dev.49155: UDP, length 1412
> 14:26:27.999817 IP dell.phahn.dev.49155 > xen12.phahn.dev.48338: UDP, length 4
> 14:26:27.999895 IP xen12.phahn.dev.48338 > dell.phahn.dev.49155: UDP, length 1412

5.10: slow, corrupt, broken localboot
> 14:24:45.833732 IP dell.phahn.dev.49154 > xen12.phahn.dev.54107: UDP, length 4
> 14:24:45.833831 IP xen12.phahn.dev.54107 > dell.phahn.dev.49154: UDP, length 1412
> 14:24:45.851872 IP dell.phahn.dev.49154 > xen12.phahn.dev.54107: UDP, length 4
> 14:24:45.852004 IP xen12.phahn.dev.54107 > dell.phahn.dev.49154: UDP, length 1412

6.02: slow, corrupt, localboot works
> 14:20:53.576966 IP dell.phahn.dev.49155 > xen12.phahn.dev.59399: UDP, length 4
> 14:20:53.577094 IP xen12.phahn.dev.59399 > dell.phahn.dev.49155: UDP, length 1412
> 14:20:53.595045 IP dell.phahn.dev.49155 > xen12.phahn.dev.59399: UDP, length 4
> 14:20:53.595173 IP xen12.phahn.dev.59399 > dell.phahn.dev.49155: UDP, length 1412


Are these problems known?
Is there something I can test or help to diagnose?

Thanks in advance.
Philipp
-- 
Philipp Hahn
Open Source Software Engineer

Univention GmbH
be open.
Mary-Somerville-Str. 1
D-28359 Bremen
Tel.: +49 421 22232-0
Fax : +49 421 22232-99
hahn at univention.de

http://www.univention.de/
Geschäftsführer: Peter H. Ganten
HRB 20755 Amtsgericht Bremen
Steuer-Nr.: 71-597-02876