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Miller, Shao

2010-Mar-04 16:07 UTC

[syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

Good day again Daniel,

So the first thing I did was to remove the >NUL for your XMSDSK line and
put a PAUSE after it in AUTOEXEC.BAT.  That way, I could see the error
message:

*** XMS RAMdisk v1.9I (FU - 08/98): XMS get free mem error.

Then I noticed that if you run AUTOEXEC.BAT manually from the DOS CLI,
XMSDSK actually succeeds!  So that led to a new test: Duplicate the
XMSDSK line.

...
pause
A:\DOS\XMSDSK.EXE 8192 Y: /t /y
pause
A:\DOS\XMSDSK.EXE 8192 Y: /t /y
pause
...

This also allowed XMSDSK to make the Y: drive.  This suggests that
whatever service XMSDSK is using needed a run-once in order to correct
some kind of condition, perhaps a leftover of PXELINUX.

Even though the second run of XMSDSK succeeds, the cabinet extraction
does not fully succeed.

I decided to rule out PXELINUX, so instead I put GRUB4DOS 0.4.4 on the
local HDD.  I booted to the HDD and ran GRUB4DOS.  From its CLI, I did:

kernel /memdisk
initrd /dellgx280.imz

and encountered the same failures as the PXELINUX case.  The "raw,"
"bigraw," "int," and "safeint" (default) modes all
produce the same
failure.

Then I tested using GRUB4DOS' non-memory drive mapping technique, which
also failed.  To do this, I used an uncompressed copy of your image
which I had also been testing.  This caused me to have a tough time
believing that the disk _could_ work.

I tried PXELINUX from Syslinux 3.61 and it failed in the same way.  I
then tried the PXELINUX from Syslinux 3.36 as your organization has been
using _along_with_ MEMDISK 3.36 and it failed in exactly the same way.

Could you kindly confirm that you have _any_ PXELINUX and/or MEMDISK
versions that work with this image?  Perhaps there is a complication
outside of the Syslinux Suite?  A BIOS upgrade?

For the curious, here's MEMINFO.C32:

INT 15h = f000:f859  DOS RAM: 560K (0x8c000)  INT 12h: 560K (0x8c000)
INT 15 88: 0xfc00 (64512K)  INT 15 E801: 0x3c00 (15360K) 0x1e68
(498176K)
       0 0000000000000000 00000000000a0000 00000000000a0000 1 [-] usable
       1 00000000000f0000 0000000000010000 0000000000100000 2 [-]
reserved
       2 0000000000100000 000000001f586c00 000000001f686c00 1 [-] usable
       3 000000001f686c00 0000000000002000 000000001f688c00 4 [-] ACPI
NVS
       4 000000001f688c00 0000000000002000 000000001f68ac00 3 [-] ACPI
reclaim
       5 000000001f68ac00 0000000000975400 0000000020000000 2 [-]
reserved
       6 00000000e0000000 0000000010000000 00000000f0000000 2 [-]
reserved
       7 00000000fed20000 0000000000080000 00000000feda0000 2 [-]
reserved
       8 00000000fed00000 0000000000000400 00000000fed00400 2 [-]
reserved
       9 00000000fec00000 0000000000100000 00000000fed00000 2 [-]
reserved
       a 00000000fee00000 0000000000100000 00000000fef00000 2 [-]
reserved
       b 00000000ffb00000 0000000000500000 0000000100000000 2 [-]
reserved

By contrast, with BIOS version A00 (above was A08):

INT 15h = f000:f859  DOS RAM: 560K (0x8c000)  INT 12h: 560K (0x8c000)
INT 15 88: 0xfc00 (64512K)  INT 15 E801: 0x3c00 (15360K) 0x1e68
(498176K)
       0 0000000000000000 00000000000a0000 00000000000a0000 1 [-] usable
       1 00000000000f0000 0000000000010000 0000000000100000 2 [-]
reserved
       2 0000000000100000 000000001f588c00 000000001f688c00 1 [-] usable
       3 000000001f688c00 0000000000002000 000000001f68ac00 4 [-] ACPI
NVS
       4 000000001f68ac00 0000000000002000 000000001f68cc00 3 [-] ACPI
reclaim
       5 000000001f68cc00 0000000000973400 0000000020000000 2 [-]
reserved
       6 00000000e0000000 0000000010000000 00000000f0000000 2 [-]
reserved
       7 00000000fed20000 0000000000080000 00000000feda0000 2 [-]
reserved
       8 00000000fed00000 0000000000000400 00000000fed00400 2 [-]
reserved
       9 00000000fec00000 0000000000100000 00000000fed00000 2 [-]
reserved
       a 00000000fee00000 0000000000100000 00000000fef00000 2 [-]
reserved
       b 00000000ffb00000 0000000000500000 0000000100000000 2 [-]
reserved

Neither A00 nor A08 allow this image to boot.

- Shao Miller



-----Original Message-----
From: Miller, Shao 
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 07:15
To: Lindgren Daniel
Subject: RE: Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

I still have my GX280 with BIOS version A08 sitting here, so I will test
it out and try to find the trouble.  Thanks! :)  - Shao



-----Original Message-----
From: Lindgren Daniel
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 03:31
To: Miller, Shao
Subject: Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

Hi Shao,
 
Attached is a 2.88 MB (compressed) floppy image for you to test.

This is what pxelinux.cfg/default looks like when I've tested it (we use
menu.c32):

LABEL 13
    MENU LABEL Dell GX280 test
    KERNEL memdisk
    APPEND initrd=images/install/dellgx280.imz

I've removed all our internal stuff (network info etc) from the image.
If you want to modify it, WinImage can open it.

Lindgren Daniel

2010-Mar-05 06:44 UTC

head link

[syslinux] Dell problems with PXELINUX 3.62

> I tried PXELINUX from Syslinux 3.61 and it failed in the same 
> way.  I then tried the PXELINUX from Syslinux 3.36 as your 
> organization has been using _along_with_ MEMDISK 3.36 and it 
> failed in exactly the same way.
> 
> Could you kindly confirm that you have _any_ PXELINUX and/or 
> MEMDISK versions that work with this image?  Perhaps there is 
> a complication outside of the Syslinux Suite?  A BIOS upgrade?
Interesting stuff. Yes, I can boot the supplied image on a GX280 with
BIOS A08, if I use pxelinux.0 3.62-pre6 or older with any version of
MEMDISK (currently using 3.85). I can also boot the image on 16 other
models with any PXELINUX version (that I've tested).

This is the spec for my test machine, taken from the BIOS setup:

Dell OptiPlex GX280
BIOS Version A08 (03/03/06)
Intel Pentium 4 2.80 GHz
2 GB RAM (4x512 MB)
80 GB SATA HDD

BIOS settings are factory default, except:
- Onboard Devices -> Integrated NIC is "On w/PXE"
- POST Behavior -> Fast Boot is Off.

Perhaps HPA is on the right track, there could be different revisions of
"GX280" which behave differently even with identical BIOS versions. Or
maybe it has something to to with the total amount of RAM, my machine is
on the DOS 2 GB limit, I'll try reducing RAM and see if it matters.

I've attached a screen shot of meminfo.c32 from my machine with BIOS
A08, with 2 GB RAM installed.

Cheers,
Daniel

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