Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage)

[x23piracy]

Hi,

we have a couple of that new Lenovo E15 Gen2 and it seems to that both kernels 4.19.143 and 5.6.18 won’t boot that device.

There seems to be a newer Realtek NIC inside:
https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?probe=87d5cec59e

Haha the Lenovo technical informations only list the nic as network connector lan/rj45 no further informations, lan seems to be something from yesterday the youth uses WLAN

Any idea, is there maybe a newer kernel i can try?

Best Regards X23

[george1421]

@x23piracy Will you get the hardware ID for this nic? You can use windows hardware ID or linux. I have some one-off kernels for some of these strange hardwares.

[x23piracy]

Hi,

@george1421 the vendor is 10ec and device 8168, we use 40AS009 Docks with that device while PXE booting was not possible with the native NIC it worked with the Docks NIC, after the Deployment the Docks NIC was not available before the device has been rebooted, the fun part is the latest Windows (20H2, Patch level from December) detects the native NIC that FOG does not while trying to PXE boot.

I am happy to test a kernel that may can run the native NIC.

Best Regards X23

[george1421]

@x23piracy Here is 5.6.18RT3 which has the updated realtek drivers in them. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O-4tvx4DywWef75qfSxLRK9M6CoDS9pd/view?usp=sharing See how well these work with that nic.

[x23piracy]

@george1421 thanks, i will report tomorrow, i am in the home office and my collegue already left the office. Thanks so far i’ll report. Realtek? Wasn’t it Realcrap?

Best Regards X23

[x23piracy]

@george1421 said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

@x23piracy Here is 5.6.18RT3 which has the updated realtek drivers in them. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O-4tvx4DywWef75qfSxLRK9M6CoDS9pd/view?usp=sharing See how well these work with that nic.

Good morning George, unfortenately the error sticks, the kernel you provided doesn’t make the device able to pxe boot, same error. Is there another kernel i can try? Is hasusbnic=1 an option? I just ask maybe this crazy thing is internally tight to usb (would be strange).

Best Regards X23

[Sebastian Roth]

@x23piracy said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

we have a couple of that new Lenovo E15 Gen2 and it seems to that both kernels 4.19.143 and 5.6.18 won’t boot that device.

Are we sure the kernel is at fault here? Can you provide a picture of the boot failure on screen so we know where exactly things go wrong?!

Secure boot disabled?

[george1421]

@x23piracy said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

the kernel you provided doesn’t make the device able to pxe boot

I agree with Sebastian, having a picture would set the context of the error. I can read the above two different ways. If you can’t get to the fog iPXE that is one thing, if you can’t register the target computer that is something else.

[x23piracy]

@sebastian-roth @george1421

Secure Boot is disabled else you won’t get to this point (picture) am i wrong?

[george1421]

@x23piracy OK this has nothing to do with the FOS Linux kernel since you are not that far in the process. The issue is with iPXE.

Instead of using ipxe.efi try snponly.efi to boot. The snponly uses the build in uefi network driver in the nic adapter instead of using the standard network driver built into ipxe.efi. snp is kind of akin to the ndis/undi interface in bios.

[x23piracy]

@george1421 I’ll try and report.

[x23piracy]

@george1421 can i temporary use snponly.efi for this specific host instead of change it for all? but how to, i think i need to specify a filter in dhcp for this specific device?

For the first test i can change for all temporary but later on if that works i need to integrate this.
Can you give me a hint?

[george1421]

@x23piracy Well I think I would test first then worry later. If she no work, then no worries.

[Sebastian Roth]

@x23piracy said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

use snponly.efi for this specific host instead of change it for all?

Yes there are ways but this depends on the DHCP server you use. For Linux DHCP (isc-dhcp) used by FOG if enabled by the installed you should be able to use host definitions to force snponly.efi for specific MAC addresses:

host lenovoe15gen2_1 {
  hardware ethernet aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff;
  filename "snponly.efi";
}

While I am not sure I would think you can do the same thing with Windows DHCP server using policies.

[x23piracy]

@george1421 @sebastian-roth said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

snponly.efi

Hi,

i tried it but anyway same error like before.

Best Regards X23

[george1421]

@x23piracy It seems that we have a number of issues lately with network adapters and booting into FOS Linux.

Is the fog server on the same subnet as the pxe booting computer? I’d like to see a pcap of the pxe booting process with this device.

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

booting into FOS Linux

Well but this device doesn’t even seem to make it through iPXE which all the others do.

@x23piracy You can try older versions of the iPXE binaries to see if any of those work. Though I don’t think you’ll have much luck with that.
https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/tree/1.5.8/packages/tftp
https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/tree/1.5.7/packages/tftp
https://github.com/FOGProject/fogproject/tree/1.5.6/packages/tftp
etc.

[george1421]

@sebastian-roth said in Lenovo E15 Gen2 won't PXE boot (bzImage):

booting into FOS Linux

You must have caught my post just after I posted it. After I hit the submit button I realized that the target computer didn’t ipxe boot directly so I changed my story. I think still getting the PCAP is what we need to see if its actually sending out the dhcp discovery bits.

[x23piracy]

@george1421 we have a supernet at work 172.19.100.0/22 (100.0/24, 101.0/24, 102.0/24 & 103.024) the two fog servers are reachable under the following ip addresses (172.19.102.17 (fog), 172.19.102.18 (fog-image) storage node. All other clients do well with current ipxe.efi (fog 1.5.0).

when i change back from snponly.efi to ipxe.efi all my other devices work well as before.

When i deploy the E15 devices with their dock it works fine, the dock nic seems to be propperly detected, the bad thing is if the device goes into windows it doesnt know the docks nic driver the first time but the internal nic is working, so we put the network cable after deployment into internal nic so fog client can do his job (rename, ad-join etc.) another solution (workaround) would be to deploy the device with both nics connected to the network.

Best Regards X23

[george1421]

@x23piracy Do you have a usb boot stick into FOS Linux? This would bypass the ipxe.efi boot loader completely. When booting via USB, does fos linux work correctly for imaging? What is the hardware id that it sees with lspci -nn | grep -i net?

Does this lenovo e15 have the latest firmware installed?