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    Multicast error with FOG USB new iMac

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    • george1421G
      george1421 Moderator @Sebastian Roth
      last edited by george1421

      @sebastian-roth Sorry english is my second language (binary is #1). I need to be more specific with my question.

      Is the issue in the transition from MAC PXE Roms to IPXE or does the MACs do not like iPXE all together? If its the first one we can get around, if its the second one we may need to do more looking.

      Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • S
        Sebastian Roth Moderator
        last edited by

        @george1421 The issue is very specific to one network card that is used in a couple of Macs (books, iMacs, maybe even some minis). So far I’ve only seen this reported with BCM57766 chips (PCI 14e4:1686). The issue is that when you install Mac OS X Sierra it’ll install a new “Boot ROM” version (I am still not exactly sure if this means UEFI firmware or what) and that breaks PXE booting for those clients. I have tested a couple other Macs (that I borrowed from friends) but they all worked (with Sierra) because they have a different NIC chip. Even very similar chips like the BCM57765 (same tg3 driver) do work!! So it’s really “special”. What happens is that on PXE boot the NIC does not come up properly. Curtis even reported that his NIC came up but it wasn’t able to send packets to the wire. I am still not exactly sure where we are with this.

        So back to your question. The Macs do load and execute iPXE but fail to establish a network connection from that. Any ideas?

        Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

        Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

        george1421G 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • george1421G
          george1421 Moderator @Sebastian Roth
          last edited by

          @sebastian-roth OK since this is an efi system can we do the trick of,

          1. formatting a usb drive as fat32
          2. Create a directory structure of /EFI/BOOT
          3. Then take /tftpboot/ipxe.efi from the FOG server and place it into that directory structure on the usb flash drive.
          4. Rename ipxe.efi in /EFI/BOOT to /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
          5. And probably for good measure, take /tftpboot/i386-efi/ipxe.efi from the FOG server and place it into that directory structure on the usb flash drive.
          6. Rename ipxe.efi (from the i386-efi directory) in /EFI/BOOT to /EFI/BOOT/BOOTIA32.EFI
          7. And finally move that flash drive to a mac and usb boot from it?

          If iPXE is happy you should get the FOG iPXE menu.

          Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • george1421G
            george1421 Moderator @Sebastian Roth
            last edited by

            @sebastian-roth ok, now…

            I had a few minutes to test an idea I had with my FOS usb boot drive.

            If we do the following we can jump start iPXE from grub.

            1. Append the two new menu entries to /boot/grub/grub.conf on the flash drive.
            menuentry "7. FOG iPXE Jumpstart BIOS" {
             echo loading the kernel
             linux16  /boot/ipxe.krn
             echo booting iPXE...
            }
            
            menuentry "8. FOG iPXE Jumpstart EFI" {
             echo chain loading the kernel
             insmod chain 
             chainloader /boot/ipxe.efi
             echo booting iPXE-efi...
            }
            
            1. Copy the following files from the fog server /tftpboot directory to the flash drive in the /boot directory.
              1 ipxe.krn
              2 ipxe.efi

            Now boot the mac from the usb drive, you should see the GRUB menu now with options 7 and 8. Since this is an EFI system, pick option 8 to chain into ipxe.efi. If everything works well you should see the FOG iPXE menu.

            Since I don’t have a mac here, I tested on a Dell o790. This test failed, it hung on initializing the network adapter it printed the mac address and then displayed 3 dots but never went any more. I did the same process with a Dell 7040 in efi mode and it booted correctly.

            The 790 was the first model to support uefi, but it looks like it doesn’t support pxe booting in uefi mode. So it may be missing the uefi network stack. That might explain why ipxe.efi hung setting up the network adapter.

            Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

            AbuelikaA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • S
              Sebastian Roth Moderator
              last edited by Sebastian Roth

              @george1421 Why not going the easy way you described at first. I quite like that, simple and nice. Though both ways should work. Thanks for testing!

              Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

              Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

              george1421G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • george1421G
                george1421 Moderator @Sebastian Roth
                last edited by

                @sebastian-roth I like the first way since its the simplest.

                The second way is if you wanted a single usb stick that will boot directly into FOS and bypass iPXE if iPXE is having a problem with setting up the hardware, or if its just the pxe roms at fault you can jump into iPXE from GRUB boot and have the full function of FOG via iPXE. Its just two different ways to get to the same answer.

                That is why I kept asking about iPXE with these macs. Based on your response it was the pxe roms in the MAC that was at fault not iPXE.

                Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • AbuelikaA
                  Abuelika @george1421
                  last edited by

                  Hi @george1421 ,

                  The menu does not appear, directly starts network

                  alt text

                  GFG! ¬¬!

                  george1421G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • george1421G
                    george1421 Moderator @Abuelika
                    last edited by

                    @abuelika Well that was a nice try. It looks like iPXE doesn’t support the network adapter, or probably more correct iPXE doesn’t support the uefi firmware that is sitting between iPXE and the network adapter.

                    I did check into what it would take to have grub (from the fos boot usb) connect to the multicast. The fog developers are doing some tricks with iPXE that I don’t know (yet) how to do with grub. I’m still going to look into it, but grub is not quite as dynamic as iPXE is.

                    Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • S
                      Sebastian Roth Moderator
                      last edited by

                      @Abuelika Thanks for testing this. So we proofed that this is not essentially a PXE/netboot issue but just something with the tg3 driver that cannot properly initialize the NIC after the new Sierra boot ROM has been deployed. No matter booting it from an USB key or over network. Nice sh**

                      Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                      Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                      george1421G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • george1421G
                        george1421 Moderator @Sebastian Roth
                        last edited by

                        @sebastian-roth OK now that we’ve identified that iPXE is having an issue init’ing the tigon driver, how about trying plan “B” booting directly info FOG? Its not the cleanest solution but it might allow the OP the ability to image these computers???

                        Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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