Syslinux - Feb 2014 - Very slow download with pxelinux > 4.07 on specific hardware

Yes on optiplex 790 i upgraded from A07 to A18 (there was a nic upgrade) 
but it didn't change anything..

On optiplex 380 i upgraded from bios A01 to A07(don't know if upgrade 
contained pxe or not)...

I tried, lpxelinux.0 and it wasn't faster.

Only v4.07 helped on these machines.

Tomorrow, i will give a try with 6.03pre2.

In wireshark, i saw no errors, the packet length was the same on a fast 
and a slow machine, the
only thing that changed was the number of packet per second. I didn't 
measure exactly, but when
a fast machine was receiving a tftp packet each 0.003 second, the slow 
one did each 0.02 s.

I can send you a wireshark trace if you want.

I know it's not easy for you to help remotely, so is there any trace i 
can produce ?
some option to make it more verbose ? I saw debug.c32, but it seems to 
intervene later in the process.

Cheers,
Eric
ps : sorry for my bad english :-(



Le 24/02/2014 18:16, Gene Cumm a ?crit :
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Eric PEYREMORTE
> <eric.peyremorte at iut-valence.fr> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> We had to setup a pxelinux on a new server (windows 2012) and used the
>> latest release of pxelinux 6.0.2.
>>
>> Everything went ok on my first client test machine : dell optiplex 740.
Pxe
>> was really fast (vesamenu with large background image was appearing in
less
>> than 3 secondes)
>>
>> But on different client machine i got different results :
>>
>> On optiplex 790 (core i5 with intel 82579 nic) and 380 (core 2 duo with
bcm
>> 57xx), it takes 1 minute for the menu to appear.
>>
>> On  optiplex 7010(core i5 92579lm), it is as fast as with optiplex 740.
>>
>> At the beginning i thought it was because my newer machine were on an
efi
>> bios, but the 7010 is too and i have no problem(i always use legacy
boot).
>>
>> With pxelinux 4.0.7, everything is running smooth. I think i'll
stick with
>> this version. But i think i'm loosing some interesting features...
>>
>> Any clue ?
> Have you checked if any BIOS/Firmware updates the PXE OROM on these
> systems?  6.03-pre2 was just released last night and may also be worth
> testing.  lpxelinux.0 uses lwIP instead of the traditional API calls
> and might be another point worth testing.
>

I did some additional tests :

On a dell optiplex 380, i disabled internal nic, added a 3com 905c tx 
external pci nic : very slow too.
On a dell 740(which is always fast), i put the 3com to be sure : very fast.

So it seems it is not related to the nic itself. To be sure it wasn't 
just one failing computer i tested several 380.

I tried disabling several features in bios, like Execute Disable, 
multicore support, speedstep... Nothing helped.

I thought at the beginning it was an efi problem (althought i use it in 
bios mode), but on optiplex 7010 which is efi based too, i don't have 
the problem...

I used 6.03pre2 for this test.

As i said previously no problem before version 5.00.

Cheers

Le 24/02/2014 22:28, Eric PEYREMORTE a ?crit :
> Yes on optiplex 790 i upgraded from A07 to A18 (there was a nic 
> upgrade) but it didn't change anything..
>
> On optiplex 380 i upgraded from bios A01 to A07(don't know if upgrade 
> contained pxe or not)...
>
> I tried, lpxelinux.0 and it wasn't faster.
>
> Only v4.07 helped on these machines.
>
> Tomorrow, i will give a try with 6.03pre2.
>
> In wireshark, i saw no errors, the packet length was the same on a 
> fast and a slow machine, the
> only thing that changed was the number of packet per second. I didn't 
> measure exactly, but when
> a fast machine was receiving a tftp packet each 0.003 second, the slow 
> one did each 0.02 s.
>
> I can send you a wireshark trace if you want.
>
> I know it's not easy for you to help remotely, so is there any trace i 
> can produce ?
> some option to make it more verbose ? I saw debug.c32, but it seems to 
> intervene later in the process.
>
> Cheers,
> Eric
> ps : sorry for my bad english :-(
>
>
>
> Le 24/02/2014 18:16, Gene Cumm a ?crit :
>> On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Eric PEYREMORTE
>> <eric.peyremorte at iut-valence.fr> wrote:
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> We had to setup a pxelinux on a new server (windows 2012) and used
the
>>> latest release of pxelinux 6.0.2.
>>>
>>> Everything went ok on my first client test machine : dell optiplex 
>>> 740. Pxe
>>> was really fast (vesamenu with large background image was appearing
>>> in less
>>> than 3 secondes)
>>>
>>> But on different client machine i got different results :
>>>
>>> On optiplex 790 (core i5 with intel 82579 nic) and 380 (core 2 duo 
>>> with bcm
>>> 57xx), it takes 1 minute for the menu to appear.
>>>
>>> On  optiplex 7010(core i5 92579lm), it is as fast as with optiplex
740.
>>>
>>> At the beginning i thought it was because my newer machine were on 
>>> an efi
>>> bios, but the 7010 is too and i have no problem(i always use legacy
>>> boot).
>>>
>>> With pxelinux 4.0.7, everything is running smooth. I think i'll
>>> stick with
>>> this version. But i think i'm loosing some interesting
features...
>>>
>>> Any clue ?
>> Have you checked if any BIOS/Firmware updates the PXE OROM on these
>> systems?  6.03-pre2 was just released last night and may also be worth
>> testing.  lpxelinux.0 uses lwIP instead of the traditional API calls
>> and might be another point worth testing.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Syslinux mailing list
> Submissions to Syslinux at zytor.com
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
>
>

-- 
Eric PEYREMORTE
Technicien Informatique - CRI
http://www.iut-valence.fr
T: 04.75.41.88.37

On 02/25/2014 07:07 AM, Eric PEYREMORTE wrote:
> I did some additional tests :
> 
> On a dell optiplex 380, i disabled internal nic, added a 3com 905c tx
> external pci nic : very slow too.
> On a dell 740(which is always fast), i put the 3com to be sure : very fast.
> 
> So it seems it is not related to the nic itself. To be sure it wasn't
> just one failing computer i tested several 380.
> 
> I tried disabling several features in bios, like Execute Disable,
> multicore support, speedstep... Nothing helped.
> 
> I thought at the beginning it was an efi problem (althought i use it in
> bios mode), but on optiplex 7010 which is efi based too, i don't have
> the problem...
> 
> I used 6.03pre2 for this test.
> 
> As i said previously no problem before version 5.00.
> 
OK, this is extremely surprising.  Normally the NIC card BIOS is what
matters for PXE performance, but it sounds like in your case there is
something going on in the main BIOS that is causing problems.

	-hpa