[gPXE] gPXE, nc380t (bcm5706 / bnx2) sanboot iscsi connectivity and BIOS issues

[Marcin Kosieradzki]

Thank you for answer.

After 'exit' command no message is displayed and machine stops responding.


I did additional tests yesterday trying to boot different machines
with this card.

On the machine with an old revision S5000PSL (with builtin VGA) (the
one I was describing in previous email): if I didn't
press ctrl+B there was a "Press F2 to enter SETUP" message displayed and
sometimes after pressing F2 it was changing into "Entering SETUP", but
nothing happened.

On the machine with a newer revision S5000PSL (with builtin VGA),
after not pressing ctrl+B in gpxe there was
initialization message of second chipset on my NC380T (which I didn't
turn off) displayed,
something like "Press F1 to skip iSCSI". And then "Press F2 to enter SETUP"....

On the third machine with an old recision S5000VSA (with PCI VGA card
and builtin VGA card disabled):
If I pressed ctrl+B machine was immediately rebooted.
If I didn't there was "press F2 to enter setup" and machine was
rebooted after few seconds.

On all the machines I've tried enabling and disabling Intel Embedded
RAID and it didn't change anything.


I'm planning to buy Intel PRO/1000 ET NIC, put it in lower number
PCI-e port, boot OS from iSCSI, disable mba on
both chipsets on NC380T and then continue to solve first issue, but
this time probably running gPXE from USB stick.

Marcin Kosieradzki

>> Another issue is that I am now unable to enter computer BIOS or boot
>> any OS - I will need to reflash my NIC, but AFAIK I cannot do this
>> without network connectivity.
>
> Does the "exit" gPXE shell command fail?  What happens?
>
> Stefan
>