Syslinux - Mar 2002 - pxelinux problems

Hi,

I'm seeing a strange problem when using pxelinux - it loads OK initially
and finds pxelinux.cfg/default, but then hangs.

Looking in the server's /var/log/messages, I find this:

Mar 18 14:01:38 fal000phys02 tftpd[24310]: tftp: client does not accept options
Mar 18 14:01:38 fal000phys02 xinetd[6441]: tftp service was deactivated because
of looping   

If I reload xinetd twice, tftpd is reactivated and I get the boot prompt
on the client. If I type in the label name it says "Can't find
image...,
but I can type in "vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img" and the kernel loads and
everything works fine from there.

The pxelinux.cfg/default file is a copy of the syslinux.cfg taken from the
Red Hat installation boot image, as I'm attempting to upgrade the OS in 
100 boxes in a cluster that have no floppy or CD drives.

The cluster boxes use Intel Boot Client 3.0.3, and I'm using the
"conventional TFTP" configuration of dhcpd. The server is running Red
Hat
7.0.

Can anyone see where I'm going wrong?

Cheers,
Andy Wallace

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Josef Siemes wrote:
> Hi,
> Andrew Wallace <andyw at hep.lancs.ac.uk> schrieb am 19.03.02:
> > I'm seeing a strange problem when using pxelinux - it loads OK
initially
> > and finds pxelinux.cfg/default, but then hangs.
> > 
> > Looking in the server's /var/log/messages, I find this:
> > 
> > Mar 18 14:01:38 fal000phys02 tftpd[24310]: tftp: client does not
accept options
> 
> The rom resets one tftp request, and the tftp server logs this. No
> problem, just annoying.
> 
> > Mar 18 14:01:38 fal000phys02 xinetd[6441]: tftp service was
deactivated because
> > of looping   
> 
> xinetd thinks that the tftp server starts too often per second, so
> it deactivates it.
> 
> Which tftp server do you use? Did you try to use the short daemon mode
> of tftp-hpa? Did you try to tell xinetd to allow several (e.g. 100)
> instances per second to be started? 
> 
> If you boot via pxelinux one client issues about 10 tftp requests,
> and these in much less than a second. This isn't a problem, but 
> xinetd seems to think it is.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Josef
> 
Thanks for the explanation. It worked after I changed the default file to
get rid of some unneeded options. I still got the first error message but
it didn't shut down tftp and the installation program started. However,
from your message I'm guessing this had nothing to do with it :-)

I'm actually using the tftp-server version which comes with RedHat 7.0. If
I have more problems I'll switch to tftp-hpa and try it as a standalone
daemon.

Cheers,
Andy