[gPXE] Dell T300 w/Broadcom chip: gpxe hangs during dhcp

[Shao Miller]

Peter Scheie wrote:
>
> ...where there would normally be a series of dots
> marking time while it gets an address from our dhcp server, there 
> appears just a
> single dot and then it just hangs.
>

This happens to me on out-of-memory conditions, sometimes.  I find that 
often gPXE will still respond to Control-C at this point.  The fewer 
opened interfaces at once, the better.  'ifstat' and 'ifclose' can help 
to ensure only a single interface is in use.

> ...but as it's
> downloading the kernel, it stalls.
>

Strange.  Could it be a sign of an out-of-memory condition, also?  I 
would expect gPXE to handle these nicely, though.

> So, any ideas as to
> - why gpxe hangs during dhcp for eth0?
>

Well, it could be a bug with the InitRD+CmdLine patched version of gPXE 
you are running...  You might try a regular gPXE and see if you get the 
same results.

> - why it would stop communicating with the gateway after ~90 seconds & 
> 23MB?
>

Possibly due to a bug.

> - what kind of behavior one would expect if a network card/chip is not 
> supported
> by gpxe?
>

Not supported could mean not reported by 'ifstat'.  If it's in 'ifstat', 
it's supposedly supported.

> - how to figure out why machines booting gpxe connected directly to our
> corporate network can't get addresses from our dhcp server,
>

'tcpdump' or WireShark might be able to help with this.  You could 
e-mail a packet capture.  You could also enable DHCP debugging in gPXE 
like this:

# cd gpxe/src
# make DEBUG=dhcp bin/gpxe.lkrn

> and if the address
> is provided by hand, can't download gpxe scripts from an external 
> webserver?
>

Try to be sure that your DNS and router settings are set correctly.  You 
can check the output of 'route' after making your manual settings.

>
> ...
>

Disclaimer: All claims and opinions are solely those of myself and do 
not and should not be perceived as representing the Etherboot nor the 
gPXE projects in any way.  Thank you for your understanding.

- Shao Miller
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