[gPXE] problems booting gPXE

[Brandon Penglase]

Sorry someone didn't respond sooner.

You didn't tell us what gPXE build you were using, and this can make a
big difference. 
Example, were you use unidonly.kkpxe, or .*pxe and chainloading? Or
were you loading up the full binary with all drivers?

I know the RTL8111 Gigabit Chipset has issues using undionly.kkpxe,
with chainloading, it doesn't do it right
(http://etherboot.org/wiki/hardwareissues#realtek_rtl8111d), and I'm
not sure what the HPs use offhand. I ran into this when I first tried
to netboot an Asus AT5IONT-I Board.

At my work, we've got a bunch of different Dell's (960, 980, T3500,
490, Latt 6510, etc), and all of these have seemed to work well using
undionly.kkpxe and chainloading.  

For the other issues with loading 2.1 but not 3.0, it would help to
know what kind of errors you are getting.

	Brandon Penglase

On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:45:33 -0500
"Alexander,Jeff" <Jeff.Alexander at wwt.com> wrote:

> I work in a shop where we image hundreds of machines a day. Currently
> we are setup with a modified WDS server that serves up a PXElinux
> menu first and then redirects to WDS if no other option is chosen.
> WDS is only used to serve a customized WinPE image which then loads
> an HTA based menu. From there we choose what image to load on the
> device.
> 
> When we are at around 100 machines imaging concurrently, it takes
> significantly longer to pull down the WinPE image. Once that is done,
> Imaging the machine with a Ghost, WIM, or Altitis image is not nearly
> as affected. We suspect that the problem lies with using TFTP to pull
> down the WinPE image.
> 
> So when I found gPXE and its ability to use other protocols such as
> HTTP, I was very excited. I immediately setup a test server to try it
> out. I ran into few problems setting it all up and we began testing
> with live images.
> 
> What we discovered is that for about 80% of the various models we
> tested, everything worked as expected. But for the other 20%, various
> issues would arise. One model may not PXE boot at all, another may
> start to PXE boot but then give some cryptic error, etc.
> 
> A few specific issues that I wrote down are:
> 
> HP 8000 Elite Desktop - using gPXE, boots from WinPE 2.1 but not from
> WinPE 3.0 (very strange issue) HP ProBook 6440b - using gPXE, when
> you choose to return control to WDS from PXElinux, will not boot from
> WDS
> 
> We mainly image HP and Dell machines. Current models only, not trying
> to image old machines.
> 
> Because of this, we can't implement gPXE as a production solution.
> 
> I know that gPXE is relatively new and is constantly being worked on.
> I am just wondering if there is anything I can do to help with
> resolving the issues we are seeing. When gPXE does work, it loads the
> PE image significantly faster than when using TFTP.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jeff