[syslinux] My last try to fix memdisk boot problem

reg at krautmann.net
Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:38:52 -0000

Hi community,

since more than one week I try now to boot my client via PXE.

More informations about my equipment:

Client:

Board ASUS K8V-X SE Amibios with BIOS Revision 1501 (newest)
Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)


Server:

Tyan Tomcat K7M Board with Eisfair 1.6.1 (www.eisfair.org)

With exactly the same hardware unattended boots where working for more
than one year perfectly without any trouble.




INETD.CONF regarding PXE:

START_TFTPD    = yes
TFTPD_ADD_ARGS




DHCPD.CONF (only PXE part)

DHCPD_PXE_N        =   1
DHCPD_PXE_1_NAME   =   test
DHCPD_PXE_1_ACTIVE =   yes
DHCPD_PXE_1_KERNEL =   unattended/memdisk
DHCPD_PXE_1_INITRD DHCPD_PXE_1_ROOT   DHCPD_PXE_1_APPEND =
initrd=unattended/fetnd.imz

I also tried the options "raw" and "bigraw" at the end of
the append
line, without success.

fetnd.imz is the correct .imz file that works with my client. I tried
this out with a floppy disk and everything was working.


Generated (by my dhcp server) default file:

#
# Do not edit this file, edit /etc/config.d/dhcpd
# Creation date: Wed Aug  5 22:44:43 CEST 2009

DEFAULT test
PROMPT 1
TIMEOUT 150
DISPLAY pxelinux.cfg/boot.msg
F1 pxelinux.cfg/boot.msg

LABEL test
KERNEL unattended/memdisk
APPEND initrd=unattended/fetnd.img


S Y M P T O M S:

When my client boots it gets an IP from my DHCP Server. Then it starts
pxelinux.0.

Then the following happens:

Loading memdisk.............
Loading fetnd.imz...........
Ready

This happens when i Use MEMDISK 3.36.

When I use newer MEMDISK version (I tried until 3.83-pre6) the same
messages appear, but then the PC reboots itself and does this in an
endless loop.

So two possibilities:

* freezing after "Ready"
* rebooting after "Ready"

I absolutely dont know what is going on here and I tried everything. I
believe that all of my settings are correct, and think it must have to
do with memdisk.

AGAIN: It worked already with the same hardware....no changes

If you have any futher questions regarding hard- or software details
please tell me and I will post it here.

Hopefully we can fix this problem....it really sucks :)

regards
Bernd