Syslinux - Feb 2007 - [PXELINUX]A PXE booting question, please

Hi all,

I was trying to install Red Hat Linux 7.3 on my computer through network 
install. I had setup TFTP server and Linux network install server.  DHCP 
server is ready as well. The ROM of onboard network card was enabled, 
the chip on the card is Realtek R8111B.

Everything was fine at the booting stage,  machine got the IP and booted 
up with the pxelinux, then kernel vmlinuz and initrd.img were loaded. 
But the loading kickstart configuration file failed, because the network 
card was not recognized. I looked at the screen log, there was DHCP 
request on the network card, which falied it said it was because no such 
device. The installation could not be continued. It was prompted up with 
"tmp/ks.cfg" not found error, and I was given the options to choose
the
correct network card driver to use.

Now I am wondering sending out this DHCP request is done by PXELINUX or 
the linux kernel, or something else. Can we just use the TCP/IP ability 
of the PXE to get the network access, which is done at the earliest 
stage like IP request and TFTP transfer.

The PXELINUX configuration file was the following:

default linux
prompt 1
timeout 500
display boot.msg

label localboot
        LOCALBOOT 0

label linux
  kernel vmlinuz-7.3
  append initrd=initrd-7.3.img ramdisk_size=10000 
ks=http://192.168.160.6/data2/network-install/ks.cfg

label old
  kernel vmlinuz-7.3
  append initrd=initrd.img ksdevice=eth0 ramdisk_size=10000 network 
ks=http://192.168.160.6/data2/network-install/ks.cfg


Can anyone help, please? How can I get my work done?

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,
Eric

> Now I am wondering sending out this DHCP request is done by PXELINUX or 
> the linux kernel, or something else. Can we just use the TCP/IP ability 
> of the PXE to get the network access, which is done at the earliest 
> stage like IP request and TFTP transfer.
> 
During an install like that you will see 2 dhcp requests, one when the
system boots and PXE does it's request to obtain a dhcp address and
which server to talk to for tftp and such.  This sounds like it's worked
fine for you.

The second request comes in when the os (Linux) does a request to obtain
it's ip address and such, this is where you are failing.  I'm going to
go out on a limb and guess that Redhat 7.3 does not support this card
considering it's a relatively recent chipset and Redhat 7.3 is quite
old.  You may need a driver disc or something similar to get it to even
recognize the network card, or use a completely different network card
with RH7.3.

- John 'Warthog9' Hawley

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 10:00:30AM +1100, Eric Tang
wrote:
> Now I am wondering sending out this DHCP request is done by PXELINUX or 
> the linux kernel, or something else. Can we just use the TCP/IP ability 
> of the PXE to get the network access, which is done at the earliest 
> stage like IP request and TFTP transfer.
Anaconda, the installer running under Linux.
> Can anyone help, please? How can I get my work done?
You need to add the network card driver to the initrd. Or recompile the
kernel with it integrated.

As for the first case, you'll have to add the module to modules.cgz (a
compressed cpio archive), IIRC. There's probably some files you also
need to update that specify module dependencies and PCI IDs to device
drivers.

Alternatively, you could use a driver disk, but then there wouldn't be
much point in booting via network.

Also, there may be different initrds with different modules according to
expected usage (network install, pcmcia install, etc.; see images/ on
the ISO).

-- 
lfr
0/0