Syslinux - Mar 2005 - etherboot 5.3.14 and pxelinux keyboard problem

Hello PXE folk,

I mentioned in another thread that I had problems finding an etherboot 
that actually works with a 486 and Realtek 8019/NE2000 card.  Etherboot 
worked up until v 5.3.5-mc1 with the ne driver but then stopped working 
between 5.3.7 to 5.3.13 (anoying since 5.3.7 started supporting 
PXELINUX.   But then I downloaded 5.3.14 and it seems to work again with 
the ne driver (finally pxelinux support!).

Now it seems I have found a bug in PXELINUX with regards to etherboot. 
Up until 2.07 pxelinux was responsive to the keyboard.  From 2.08 and up 
the keyboard is locked at the boot prompt when pxelinux is loaded via 
etherboot 5.3.14.

I think the following from the NEWS file may have something to do with 
it (PXELINUX 2.08):

* PXELINUX: Poll for ARP requests while sitting at the prompt.  This 
makes some boot servers a lot less unhappy.

Unfortunately I cannot get any further.  PXELINUX 2.07 and lower seem to 
have a problem loading images from the tftp server which I believe is 
fixed in the later versions of PXELINUX.

Can anybody confirm this problem?

Quinn

Quinn wrote:
> 
> Now it seems I have found a bug in PXELINUX with regards to etherboot. 
> Up until 2.07 pxelinux was responsive to the keyboard.  From 2.08 and up 
> the keyboard is locked at the boot prompt when pxelinux is loaded via 
> etherboot 5.3.14.
> 
That would not be a PXELINUX bug, but an Etherboot bug.  The PXE READ 
UDP call is defined as non-blocking, but several implementors have 
screwed that one up (including VMWare.)  Unfortunately not answering 
ARPs has bad effects, too.

	-hpa

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Quinn wrote:
> As requested, an etherboot PXE trace with pxelinux (serial output - 
> 9600,n,8,1 - captured via minicom):
> 
> <snip>
> [PXENV_UDP_WRITE 57090->10.0.0.100:32998 (4)]
> [PXENV_UDP_READ 10.0.0.100:32998->10.0.0.80:57090 (30)]
> [PXENV_UDP_WRITE 57090->10.0.0.100:32998 (4)]
> PXELINUX 2.13 2004-12-14  Copyright (C) 1994-2004 H. Peter Anvin
> [PXENV_UDP_WRITE 57091->10.0.0.100:69 (41)]
> [PXENV_UDP_READ 10.0.0.100:32998->10.0.0.80:57091 (12)]
> [PXENV_UDP_WRITE 57091->10.0.0.100:32998 (4)]
> [PXENV_UDP_READ 10.0.0.100:32998->10.0.0.80:57091 (260)]
> [PXENV_UDP_WRITE 57091->10.0.0.100:32998 (4)]
> boot:
> 
>  From here anything I type on the keyboard does not show up - and after 
> awhile the keyboard buffer gets full and beeps at me.
> Same thing via the serial console - type anything, but nothing shows up.
Thanks.  Whatever's causing the lockup, it's in pxelinux.  At the time
of
the lockup, it's not in the middle of a PXE API call - you can tell
because there is no unterminated "[PXENV_" message.

Are you using the pxelinux.0 as distributed in the syslinux 3.08-pre5
tarball?  If not, please try it, since that version works for me.

Michael