[gPXE] gpxe user confusion

[D. Bahi]

On 05/26/2010 04:04 PM, Miller, Shao wrote:
> Good day Das,
> 
> Are you using Nortel 470-48T layer 2 switches?

No sir, this is an HP virtual switch blade center.

> Would you care to share the VENdor and DEVice IDs for the HP ProLiant
> BL460c G6 Server's NIC or do you already know there is no gPXE driver?

They are bnx2x 1490:1650 (no driver support) but we're chaining.

> undionly.kkpxe will only have the UNDI driver, meaning it's relying on
> the original NIC's PXE.  Who might that be?  If you are doing gPXE ->
> gPXE (as would be the case with some QLogic/NetXen NICs), this could be
> a complication worth discussing.

We were relying on the original PXE UNDI (broadcom?) and chaining with
kkpxe - w/o set use-cached 1 and the dhcp net0 was failing.

> If the DHCP transaction is your only point of failure, you may use:
> 
> set use-cached 1
> dhcp net0
> 
> within your embedded script, which will take the IP parameters from the
> same DHCP transaction which send gPXE to the client.

We added DEBUG=dhcp to the build and set use-cached 1 in the script
before dhcp net0 (kept the discovered network info) and the network just
didn't work - ifstat would show TX but no RX.

w/o set use-cached 1 the dhcp net0 on the console always timed out w/o
any real debug info - just showed it trying 4 times instead of the
failure alone.

Finally, I built and loaded undionly.kpxe instead. Found out you can't
use set use-cached 1 with that gpxe image (duh - makes sense as the
kkpxe "keeps" the former env when loading and 'kpxe' doesn't - fuzzy on
understanding, but i get the idea.)  This works. Don't Understand why.

Thank you for the suggestions.

db

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 251 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://etherboot.org/pipermail/gpxe/attachments/20100527/a9b936cd/attachment.bin