Syslinux - Jul 2014 - lpxelinux hangs under Intel Boot Agent 1.3.81 (2.1 build 089) on Dell Optiplex 990 BIOS A16

Trying to PXE boot a Dell Optiplex 990 with BIOS A16, which has Intel 
Boot Agent 1.3.81 (2.1 build 089). It gets network and launches 
lpxelinux.0, I see the PXELINUX banner line, but there it hangs.

I tried both 6.03-pre18 and 5.10, same hanging behavior. If I instead 
use pxelinux.0 or gpxelinux.0, either 6.03-pre18 or 5.10 or 4.07, there 
are no problems. The problem seems isolated to lpxelinux.0, and isolated 
to this specific hardware/BIOS. We're otherwise PXE booting to 
lpxelinux.0 6.03-pre18 on a bunch of different machines without trouble.

I can update the BIOS to A18 and try again with possibly newer Intel 
Boot Agent code, if that report would help, but I only have this one 
machine of this type. Thus, before I upgrade to A18, in case any 
developers on this list want me to try anything with the current broken 
setup, if that will help isolate a problem in lpxelinux.0 (or a way for 
lpxelinux.0 to work around a problem in the Intel Boot Agent or Dell 
BIOS), I'll be glad to try some things and report back.

Alex

On 07/10/2014 04:07 PM, Alexander Perlis wrote:
> Trying to PXE boot a Dell Optiplex 990 with BIOS A16, which has Intel
> Boot Agent 1.3.81 (2.1 build 089). It gets network and launches
> lpxelinux.0, I see the PXELINUX banner line, but there it hangs.
> 
> I tried both 6.03-pre18 and 5.10, same hanging behavior. If I instead
> use pxelinux.0 or gpxelinux.0, either 6.03-pre18 or 5.10 or 4.07, there
> are no problems. The problem seems isolated to lpxelinux.0, and isolated
> to this specific hardware/BIOS. We're otherwise PXE booting to
> lpxelinux.0 6.03-pre18 on a bunch of different machines without trouble.
> 
> I can update the BIOS to A18 and try again with possibly newer Intel
> Boot Agent code, if that report would help, but I only have this one
> machine of this type. Thus, before I upgrade to A18, in case any
> developers on this list want me to try anything with the current broken
> setup, if that will help isolate a problem in lpxelinux.0 (or a way for
> lpxelinux.0 to work around a problem in the Intel Boot Agent or Dell
> BIOS), I'll be glad to try some things and report back.
> 
Could you get a packet trace from the server, to see if you see any
traffic at all before it dies?

	-hpa

On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 7:24 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com>
wrote:
> On 07/10/2014 04:07 PM, Alexander Perlis wrote:
>> Trying to PXE boot a Dell Optiplex 990 with BIOS A16, which has Intel
>> Boot Agent 1.3.81 (2.1 build 089). It gets network and launches
>> lpxelinux.0, I see the PXELINUX banner line, but there it hangs.
>>
>> I tried both 6.03-pre18 and 5.10, same hanging behavior. If I instead
>> use pxelinux.0 or gpxelinux.0, either 6.03-pre18 or 5.10 or 4.07, there
>> are no problems. The problem seems isolated to lpxelinux.0, and
isolated
>> to this specific hardware/BIOS. We're otherwise PXE booting to
>> lpxelinux.0 6.03-pre18 on a bunch of different machines without
trouble.
>>
>> I can update the BIOS to A18 and try again with possibly newer Intel
>> Boot Agent code, if that report would help, but I only have this one
>> machine of this type. Thus, before I upgrade to A18, in case any
>> developers on this list want me to try anything with the current broken
>> setup, if that will help isolate a problem in lpxelinux.0 (or a way for
>> lpxelinux.0 to work around a problem in the Intel Boot Agent or Dell
>> BIOS), I'll be glad to try some things and report back.
>>
>
> Could you get a packet trace from the server, to see if you see any
> traffic at all before it dies?
If the traffic appears like any responses to the client after
lpxelinux.0 starts running are probably ignored by the client PC, try
4.10-pre22 and report the value of flags and the first 3 octets of the
MAC address.  This may require the same workaround that some other
models needed (specifically a 760).

-- 
-Gene