[syslinux] testing out 6.03 network booting...

[Gene Cumm]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 2:51 PM, Andrew Rae <A.M.Rae at leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> wasnt sure whether this was the best place to put this information; but something seems to have gone 'backwards' in the later pre-releases of 6.03 regarding network booting.

I'd say this is an excellent place to start.

I'm getting some similar results here with the precompiled binaries
and my binaries of 6.03-pre17

> below are results of me testing - i did each a few times to make sure they are valid results.
>
> hope it helps identify something that's gone awry ?
> so far, 6.03 pre11 and pre13 (excluding efi32) seem most stable for PXE/EFI Network booting....
>
> Cheers
> Andrew
> ----------------
> all on VMWare Workstation 9 (Windows) - booting from DHCPD & TFTPD-hpa on Centos 6 x64

I'm running Workstation 10.0.2 but on Linux.  I assume you're just
passing EFI32 vs EFI64 binaries (I'm doing this with different
directories)

> all booting RHEL7 kernel/initrd over TFTP or HTTP, and then loading the install.img from HTTP....
> ----------------
> 6.03-pre11 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boota OK TFTP
> 6.03-pre12 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP
> 6.03-pre13 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP
> 6.03-pre14 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP
> 6.03-pre15 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP
> 6.03-pre16 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP
> 6.03-pre17 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP
> ----------------
> 6.03-pre11 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP & HTTP
> 6.03-pre12 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: very slow compared to pre11. boots TFTP & HTTP
> 6.03-pre13 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP & HTTP
> 6.03-pre14 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: very slow compared to pre13. some odd 'tftpd: read: connection refused' and 'tftpd: read(ack): connection refused'. never boots - normally sits downloading vmlinuz & does nothing further
> 6.03-pre15 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: as per pre14
> 6.03-pre16 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: as per pre14
> 6.03-pre17 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP & HTTP
> ----------------
> 6.03-pre11 EFI32: boots OK TFTP & HTTP
> 6.03-pre12 EFI32: fails - gets stuck in a loop downloading files - differs each boot
> 6.03-pre13 EFI32: fails - downloads /pxelinux.c32 & /ldlinux.c32 - then continually retries to download ldlinux.e32
> 6.03-pre14 EFI32: fails - downloads /pxelinux.c32 & /ldlinux.e32 - also then tries to download /syslinux/ldlinux.e32, /boot/isolinux/ldlinux.e32, and /syslinux/ldlinux.e32 - then boot fails
> 6.03-pre15 EFI32: fails as per pre14
> 6.03-pre16 EFI32: fails as per pre14
> 6.03-pre17 EFI32: fails as per pre14
> -----------------
> 6.03-pre11 EFI64: fails - gets stuck in a loop downloading files - differs each boot
> 6.03-pre12 EFI64: fails - downloads /pxelinux.e64 & /ldlinux.e64 - then continually retries to download ldlinux.e64
> 6.03-pre13 EFI64: boots OK TFTP & HTTP
> 6.03-pre14 EFI64: fails - downloads /pxelinux.e64 & /ldlinux.e64 - then continually retries to download ldlinux.e64
> 6.03-pre15 EFI64: fails as per pre14
> 6.03-pre16 EFI64: fails as per pre14
> 6.03-pre17 EFI64: fails - downloads /pxelinux.e64 & /ldlinux.e64, also then tries to download /syslinux/ldlinux.e64, /boot/isolinux/ldlinux.e64, and /syslinux/ldlinux.e64 - then boot fails
> -------------------

-- 
-Gene