Syslinux - Jan 2009 - Problem with Symantec's UNDI driver and PXELINUX

Hello,

We use undi_drv.exe that is provided with Symantec Ghost Enterprise. 
This driver loads a UNDI PXE stack into memory. It, along with a UNDI 
packet driver are bundled into a 1.44MB disk image that we use for 
netbooting computer lab machines into the ghost client. This is done 
with pxelinux.

This driver has been working fine for a couple years now. Recently, I 
upgraded the pxelinux.0 to the current version, and now the UNDI driver 
no longer works. I get this error (no idea what it means):

"Load undi driver failed with status code 0xC8"

After playing around with different versions of syslinux, it seems that 
the driver works correctly with syslinux <= 3.63 and is broken with 
syslinux >= 3.70. Note that we are NOT using the 'keeppxe' option
(not
needed).

Could this be a bug in syslinux? I can provide the driver file if needed 
(it's 27KB). It is their 'universal' driver and should work on any
PXE
enabled NIC.

Thanks,
-Brian

-- 
---------------------------------------------------
Brian H. Nelson         Youngstown State University
System Administrator   Media and Academic Computing
              bnelson[at]cis.ysu.edu
---------------------------------------------------

Brian H. Nelson wrote:
> 
> "Load undi driver failed with status code 0xC8"
> 
> After playing around with different versions of syslinux, it seems that 
> the driver works correctly with syslinux <= 3.63 and is broken with 
> syslinux >= 3.70. Note that we are NOT using the 'keeppxe'
option (not
> needed).
> 
> Could this be a bug in syslinux? I can provide the driver file if needed 
> (it's 27KB). It is their 'universal' driver and should work on
any PXE
> enabled NIC.
> 
I don't know what they do, but there definitely isn't a guaranteed way 
to load the UNDI driver once it has been removed from memory.  There are 
systems where it can be made to work, but it is definitely nothing that 
is guaranteed.

I know some of those systems rely on the UNDI stack still being present 
in memory, for example; others will try to read it out of the PCI ROM 
(which doesn't work for LOM or non-PCI systems.)

Status code 0xc5 is PXENV_STATUS_LOADER_BAD_UNDI_ROMID, which implies 
that it is trying to reinitialize UNDI from ROM somehow and failing.

Using the keeppxe option is the right way to do this kind of stuff; 
without knowing exactly what the Symantec driver is trying to do I have 
absolutely no idea how even begin to approach this.

I also note that you're asking here rather than asking Symantec...

	-hpa