@Tom-Elliott

Thanks so much for your help with this. Happy to feed back any info I can so please do let me know if there’s anything else you need me to test. Will be on annual leave for a couple of weeks after this and have no access to the systems but I think this confirms your suspicion. Please see results below from a Dell OptiPlex 3070:

Addresses on this machine:

NIC: 01:00.0 (Realtek RTL8168h)
Root port: 00:1c.0

UEFI mode:

setpci -s 01:00.0 CAP_EXP+10.w = 0142 (last digit 2 = L1 enabled)
setpci -s 00:1c.0 CAP_EXP+10.w = 0c42 (last digit 2 = L1 enabled)

Legacy/CSM mode:

setpci -s 01:00.0 CAP_EXP+10.w = 0040 (last digit 0 = ASPM off)
setpci -s 00:1c.0 CAP_EXP+10.w = 0c40 (last digit 0 = ASPM off)

Dell’s UEFI firmware enables L1 on both the NIC and root port. The Legacy/CSM path leaves both off. The only difference between the two readings is those two ASPM bits. Everything else in the register is identical.

Thanks for the nudge to run these. Anything else needs testing please do let me know. We love using FOG and it’s invaluable in our set of schools that we work in at least so please do keep up the great work!

@JJ-Fullmer This was it, thank you!!

Everything I read kept telling me this machine was x86 based and there is no hint in the BIOS or the serial number lookup tool, of it running an ARM processor(other then “Elite”). We are going to return these machines to the vendor, so problem solved for us.

Would be interested in hearing about future support for ARM in FOG because I’m sure this isn’t the last time we will cross paths with it.

@JCS-RVK Understood and apologies there’s not a good method around this.

Thanks for at least understanding. I wonder if some of the similar types of issues we’ve seen historically have a similar style of problem that I’m only coming to realize now-a-days.

@Tom-Elliott just bumping this. Is there anything I can do to help? I have some experience building Linux kernels from a few years ago.

@dimoura

Hello!

Do you have Secure Boot enabled?

I worked with this Dell Machine about 6 months ago and don’t have it with me now.

So here it goes.

Ensure secure boot is disabled. You will need to re-enable it for Windows 11 to work., You need to ensure your SATA mode setting is set to “AHCI”. - If you have “RAID” selected (which was the default from the Dell Machines I tried) it will not work. If you have legacy IPv4 PXE booting that would work best, newer computers no longer have a legacy PXE boot, but use UFEI IPv4 PXE booting. Check if that is enabled.

Otherwise, check what bzImage files you are using. The bzImage files have the linux kernel drivers which I think I used the latest stable ones I could find. These are placed in /var./www/html/fog/service/ipxe

There are 4 files in there which need to be there
bzImage
bzImage32
init.zx
init_32.zx

Or others depending on what CPU architecture your machines use. These are available on the following URL
https://github.com/FOGProject/fos/releases

I found that some work better than others as the FOG project is maintaining their FOS releases and adding computers. It is possible that one you are using simply does not have the drivers for the PC you are using. I would back up these files before updating these to ensure your older machines can PXE when updating your FOS (fog OS).

Matt

@djgalloway Just to add a bit of detail here. All of the work you did was on the iPXE side, which is great work by the way. The kernel driver I updated was after you select an FOG iPXE menu item that is when bzImage is loaded and run. It relies on kernel parameters that is provided by iPXE to find the root file system. This is technically what you fixed by ensuring that default.ipxe/boot.php from the fog server was being called. At the end of the day, I’m glad you got that working because your setup is definitely an edge case that works well in your environment.

@CoNickt @avh2025
Not all usb ethernet adapters are created equal. I would usually say to just bite the bullet and get the vendor specific adapter but it looks like you already did that. I have usb and usb-c adapters that work fine but different uefi firmwares behave differently. i.e. Microsoft surface just has to have its surface branded adapter for native boot to work. HP will work sometimes with the dell or lenovo pxe capable usb-c adapters. We also recently got 2 different hp laptop models where one had to use snponly.efi and the other was fine with ipxe.efi. I maintain a table of models and which adapters work with what we have. Lots of things do just work once you have a collection of usb adapters. Unfortunately, it’s an issue of hardware vendors adding proprietary limitations, but luckily between fog and ipxe you can typically get it working pretty smooth.

Generally if you’re able to pxe boot though, it should find the adapter within pxe. It could be a case of it being too “new” an adapter that requires a different driver not in ipxe. In that case though, I would try using snponly.efi as it may have different behavior with less things loaded in the pxe side. It may also be a driver or setting needed in ipxe that could be handled in a custom compile of ipxe, there’s some info on that here https://docs.fogproject.org/en/latest/compile_ipxe_binaries

It’s also possible to use a tool such as rEFInd to get to a uefi cli console. If you load the ipxe.efi and or snponly.efi and then if you can obtain them the efi driver for the adapter you can do a fs0: to enter the usb disk (it may be fs1: or fs2: you gotta ls on each disk to find the right one) then load usb-network-driver.efi then ipxe.efi to ensure the usb network driver is loaded in the efi for that session and then boot direct to the pxe file which will start the fog network boot. It’s a bit of a hassle but it usually works for me when all else fails. I have an old startech usb 2 ethernet adapter I do this with. This has worked universally but it’s not an ideal solution, but can be poc that it can be done on any device.

I hope my rant was helpful.

@rodluz I know you were talking to the other person, but if you like you can send me the kernels for testing.

I think I have the same problem and I want to be sure of exactly what I need to do (I don’t know if there is a step-by-step tutorial…).

I boot with a USB-C network adapter on an HP Elitebook. It finds FOG, I have the menu, I choose to deploy an image, and then I get this error message:

IMG_20251106_162705.jpg

Is this the problem in question?
If so, what exactly should I do? I see (link @FlorianLenz ) that I need to replace two files with the new ones, then run the .sh. But isn’t that dangerous for other network boots?

Thank you in advance for your help.

@phant0mbot said in Dell OptiPlex 3000 Thin Client:

have tried both SAN and GRUB exit options

boot loader == snponly.efi

These are in contradiction with each other. SAN boot and Grub are bios boot methods. snponly.efi is a uefi boot loader. Since you are getting into the fog iPXE menu we can assume the hardware IS uefi based since it is booting snp.efi. Try a uefi exit mode of rEFInd (refind) to see if that will boot from the hard drive. The default value can be set globally in the fog configuration->fog settings page. Don’t force a bios attempted boot from a uefi booted computer, that never works.

@Tom-Elliott
Of course, it’s disabled. 😉

@rodluz Updating the kernel to the latest version helped; the computers are finally being restored at full and consistent speeds, for both unicast and multicast deployments. Thank you for your help.

@george1421

thank you for your great answer. You are completely right, it is a 17-x104ng, not a fg. It was an error of me 🙂

The needed hardware id is VEN_10EC&DEV_8136

Hope that helps

Thx,
mchristo

@Donutsrule5

OK lets see if we can boot from a usb drive. This tutorial will instruct you on how to build a usb boot image. https://forums.fogproject.org/post/69606 the google drive link below will take you to step 7 in the thread.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1psCrPVzBTvlakLkCMvhdoScAEZp1CKE6/view?usp=drive_link

Once you build the usb boot drive, take the kernel and init.xz from your current version of fog and replace the ones on the flash drive with the ones in from the FOG server. The files are in /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory.

Once you have the usb drive ready, pxe boot into the grub menu on the flash drive, then go into debug mode. After several pages of text you need to clear with the enter key you will be dropped at a fos linux command prompt. If you can get that far then fos linux is OK and the problem is probably with ipxe or the handoff between the two.

If you want to image with the flash drive, schedule the task in the fog server BEFORE you usb boot and select option 1 from the menu. If you get it out of sequence you will get an error that says something about Null. Basically its saying you don’t have a task scheduled on the fog server so there is nothing to do. Lets see if we can get it to boot this way.

@skyhawk3355 I remember awhile ago I needed to create a one-off kernel for a system that had a 486 cpu. I checked but I don’t have that kernel any more.

I just recompiled the linux 6.6.85 for a 586 based CPU. I can recompile for a 486, but I don’t know if that is going to get us anything better.

Here is 6.6.85 586 version
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GAzFjbtpDVXXCRpe6bIZ5mwySSXeDHko/view?usp=drive_link

Here is 6.6.85 586 where I stripped out some drivers like scsi, nvme, uncommon network drivers, virtualization drivers, etc. I was able to strip out over 1MB of kernel size from the previous one above. Did I through out too much?? YMMV.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13dE7BLgofsFiNJj_Q8nLDknplRbWRqkJ/view?usp=drive_link

@Ced58 I use this model. It’s best to get either the official Lenovo usb c ethernet adapter or the proprietary Lenovo adapter for the special ethernet port on these. Also in the bios there’s a Mac pass through option that you want to set to internal or second Mac address. With the latest version of fog and kernel it should see that internal mac even if you share an adapter for imaging multiple of that device.

@rodluz said in Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 5 - kernel panic:

@jflash Great! Did you use the default kernel from FOG after the update, or did you use the kernel from my repo?

I don’t try older kernel, just put new one 🙂

@pilipp_edv I had a very similar issue to this a while back but it was with an HP laptop. It turned out to be a hardware defect. I was able to get the motherboard replaced under warranty, so maybe you can too for this laptop.