[syslinux] UEFI: Failed to load ldlinux.e64/ldlinux.e32

Michael Glasgow glasgow at beer.net
Sun Oct 11 12:15:16 PDT 2015


Gene Cumm wrote:
> On Oct 11, 2015 1:26 AM, "Michael Glasgow" <glasgow at beer.net> wrote:
> > I got some time to look at this today.  Definitely better, but I
> > think it's still broken for me on an Oracle X5-2 with latest bios
> > and ilom firmware.  I loaded official binaries for this test and
> > replaced the two files with your patched versions.
> 
> Excellent.  We're at the next phase.

Yep, sure looks that way.  Thanks for figuring this out!

> > Here's the config file:
> >
> > DEFAULT type_INSTALL_to_begin
> 
> DEFAULT install_ovm341
> SAY type install_ovm341 to begin
> PROMPT 1
> TIMEOUT 3000
> 
> This should be treated case insensitively and tab completion should show it
> as typed.

As an aside, I intentionally break the default in that way because
this is on a shared network.  Sometimes the bios is set to boot
from pxe, and the admin doesn't realize it.  So when the system
hasn't booted, they connect to the serial console to see what's
going on and typically press enter.  Bear in mind, with a serial
console, they don't necessarily see what was printed before they
connected.  With the default pointing to a kickstart entry, you
can end up with a junior admin accidently loading up a net install
which wipes all the disks.  So I tend to either make the default
be "boot from first hard disk", or just break the default so they
have to enter a valid label.

One nice thing about setting the default this way is that the
message gets repeated every time you press enter as part of the
"not found" error.  This makes it a bit more obvious what state
the machine is in when you've freshly connected to the serial
console.  Crude, but effective.

> I'm honestly unsure if mboot.c32 works on EFI.  Did you try a plain Linux
> kernel yet?

I had not, purely because when I sat down to try this I really needed
a Xen host.

> Please try a plain Linux kernel to see if the core is flowing nicely and
> that mboot.c32 is the issue.  If you try to load a file over 15MB via TFTP,
> please do a capture to a file.  I'd like to know if your system also
> exhibits the decaying IO rate.

I just tried installing Oracle Linux 7.1, and it works!!!

I'm not sure what the decaying i/o issue looks like.  It's a bit
slow loading the initrd, but I think the efi drivers are just slow
in general.  Just in case, I went ahead and did a capture on the
g18 patch loading OL 7.1, which you can grab from here:

http://www.beer.net/m/etc/sl604p0g18.pcap.gz

[back to the xen attempt]

> Feels like a stall in mboot.c32.  I'd typically consider a hang when
> Ctrl-Alt-Del and ARP don't respond.  I'd guess that the core filled a
> buffer but mboot.c32 isn't emptying.  How much of the kernel loaded?

Seems like most of it loaded, but I didn't count.  Looks like you're
probably right about where the issue is, though, since plain linux works.

> - Was this with binaries from sl604p0g17 or sl604p0g18?
> - Could you try the other also?

Same failure mode for mboot / xen on both patches.

Success for plain linux on both patches.

Let me know what kind of info would be useful for debugging the
mboot issue, and I will collect it all.  Also, EFI is still somewhat
new to me, so I don't know how to find the UEFI firmware revision
or UEFI extension agents.  I'll see if it's in the server manual,
but if you have an idea how one typically finds those, I'd appreciate
any pointers.

Thanks again!

-- 
Michael Glasgow <glasgow at beer.net>


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