[syslinux] Problem with 90MB Initrd

[Mathias Radtke]

On 21.09.2015 12:57, Gene Cumm wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 6:36 AM, Mathias Radtke <m.radtke at uib.de> wrote:
>
>> On 21.09.2015 12:06, Gene Cumm wrote:
>>> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 2:38 AM, Mathias Radtke <m.radtke at uib.de> wrote:
>>>> The used TFTPD works fine with BIOS machines.
>>>> I have two Initrd images. One is 64bit and almost 90MB and the 32bit is
>>>> 85MB.
>>>> I know that some tftpd have limitations and I use one of these. I am
>>>> aware
>>>> of the problem.
>>> What's the exact file size in bytes?  I presume you've done BIOS boots
>>> with your 64-bit kernel/initrd and those succeed?
>> Yes booting with a BIOS machine works fine for both architectures.
>> Here's the size:
>> 87146093 miniroot-20150917.bz2
>> 91362629 miniroot-x64-20150917.bz2
> Thanks for the confirmation.
>
>>> Have you considered HTTP transfer?
>> Currently not as we are bound to the currently used tftp.
> Adding DHCP option 210, forcibly or inside DHCP option 43
> vendor-options, could redirect Syslinux to grab ldlinux.e64 and later
> files over HTTP.
>
>>> What do you observe?  Does it transfer the file then the Linux kernel
>>> crashes?  Does it spontaneously reboot before completing the
>>> operation?
>> The client is a VSphere VM Client.
>> It displayes the IP Address and then:
>> Loading Kernel..... ok
>> Loading initrd.bz2...
>>
>> This stalls for minutes and the client reboots afterwards.
> Been there.  I don't know if it's specific to the VMware-based VMs or
> not, yet.  It keeps slowing down its responses, eventually getting a
> lot of retransmissions in the loop and then hits the 5-minute timeout
> mark and spontaneously reboots.
>
>>> Have you tried doing a packet capture to see how far this client
>>> progresses?
> Probably no need to do a packet capture as I've seen this myself and
> moved to HTTP.  HTTP transfer beat out any of my TFTP transfers and
> was quite successful.
>
>>> What tftpd?  Have you reviewed the logs for partial transfers?
>> atftpd
>> here's the syslog output.
> ..snip
>
>> The .c32 files transfered are EFI64 files. I just copied them into the root
>> directory for testing purposes. As soon as the images load I will organize
>> the structure properly
> I could have asked what version but since you've finally described the
> symptoms sufficiently, I'm already aware it won't matter.
>
Strange thing is that it worked with Elilo. Since elilo is deprecated we 
now try to switch to syslinux for BIOS and EFI. I am currently trying 
everythin on VMs. Since Hpyer-V is currently out out reach and 
Virtualbox does not boot from EFI Network devices i can only test on 
VMware VMs.

-- 
Mathias Radtke, uib

mail m.radtke at uib.de