Syslinux - Nov 2011 - gpxelinux.0 and slow HTTP performance on VMware ESX

Hi,

I found this message in your online mail archive, i have found the same problem
and did some research in the past on this. Maybe you would be interested to know
it is a problem on any virtualisation product not just ESX. Second it is a
problem in gPXE that you embedded in gPXElinux. The problem was build in gPXE
after version 0.97 so any gPXElinux build a newer version has this problem. I
have tested a lot of hardware also and noticed it 1 or 2 times on a specific nic
also however i did forget which machine had the same problem as the virtual
machines.

I would like to point out that the gPXE git seems to be abandoned by it's
developers because of an argument with the person that owns the domain names and
that they continued the work under an new name iPXE. Maybe it would be a good
idea to use iPXE and let the next version be iPXElinux. Hopefully they already
fixed this bug also.

regards,

Leon Straathof.

Can you suggest a work around for the issue which doesn't involve building
any software?  I.e. Is the a version of iPXE that works with a version of
pxelinux.0 and menu.0?
Thanks.
Roy


On 11/29/11 1:34 AM, "lstraath" <lstraath at lynxsoft.nl> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I found this message in your online mail archive, i have found the same
> problem and did some research in the past on this. Maybe you would be
> interested to know it is a problem on any virtualisation product not just
ESX.
> Second it is a problem in gPXE that you embedded in gPXElinux. The problem
was
> build in gPXE after version 0.97 so any gPXElinux build a newer version has
> this problem. I have tested a lot of hardware also and noticed it 1 or 2
times
> on a specific nic also however i did forget which machine had the same
problem
> as the virtual machines.
> 
> I would like to point out that the gPXE git seems to be abandoned by
it's
> developers because of an argument with the person that owns the domain
names
> and that they continued the work under an new name iPXE. Maybe it would be
a
> good idea to use iPXE and let the next version be iPXElinux. Hopefully they
> already fixed this bug also.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Leon Straathof.
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On Dec 1, 2011 2:59 PM, "lstraath" <lstraath at lynxsoft.nl>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I found this message in your online mail archive, i have found the same
problem and did some research in the past on this. Maybe you would be
interested to know it is a problem on any virtualisation product not just
ESX. Second it is a problem in gPXE that you embedded in gPXElinux. The
problem was build in gPXE after version 0.97 so any gPXElinux build a newer
version has this problem. I have tested a lot of hardware also and noticed
it 1 or 2 times on a specific nic also however i did forget which machine
had the same problem as the virtual machines.

Could you specify some of your environment?  What version of gpxelinux.0?
Where did it come from?  Is it the official binaries?  What VMware
products?  vmnic?  VMHW version?  Guest OS hint?  Do your httpd, tfpf and
client sit on the same subnet?  Considered a packet capture on the same
port group (requires Promiscuous access on the port group) and the httpd
system?

Could you perhaps try gpxelinux.0 from the Syslinux-4.04 binary/source
archive from kernel.org (or your favorite mirror)?

PXELINUX-4.10 will be HTTP download capable.  I have tested this and worked
with others to resolve the issues so in the next prerelease it should work
on VMware platforms.

--
-Gene