[syslinux] Recent (6.02) PXELINUX on Soekris net4501

Thomas Quinot syslinux at thomas.cuivre.fr.eu.org
Tue Jun 10 11:41:38 PDT 2014


Dear all,

I'm trying to boot a recent PXELINUX on a brand new Soekris net4501
(comBIOS 1.33). This combination appears to not work out of the box...

I see much advice floating around from a few years ago, hinting that
earlier versions of PXELINUX might have worked. However before resorting
to archaeology I'd be interested in feedback from others who might have
got through this.

I managed to get to the point where the PXELINUX copyright banner
displays fined after fixing several issues:
  * incorrect video BIOS emulation in the Soekris BIOS
    (solution: rebuild PXELINUX with DisplayCon initialized
    to 0, and BaudDivisor set to the appropriate speed while
    we are at it)
  * missing stdio initialization: apparently com32 routines
    make a liberal amount of printf() calls which go nowhere
    because it seems to me that openconsole is never called
    (worked around by patching com32/lib/sys/write.c to
    call write_serial directly if fd==1, crude hack but
    allows me to use printf() for debugging).

But then I'm stuck with the box hanging in pxe_init_isr for no obvious
reason.

So, question:
  * is Soekris net4501 + PXELINUX 6.02 a supported combination?
  * are there known caveats that I have missed?
  * if the combination is unsupported, what is the latest PXELINUX
    version that is known to be work with the net4501?

Thanks!
Thomas.



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