PXE Boot Failing on Dell Laptops Without Onboard Ethernet
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Hello everyone,
I’m representing a small team at our company, and we’re currently troubleshooting an issue with PXE booting Dell laptops that do not have an onboard Ethernet port. Our standard issue Dell Inspiron 15 3520/3530 laptops don’t have onboard ethernet. Dell supports PXE boot but only if you utilize their aftermarket Ethernet to USB 3.0 adapter. We did try PXE boot on a couple older Lenovo ThinkPads and a Dell XPS with onboard Ethernet and it had no issues.
When trying to run PXE boot on a dell with this adapter, we get the following error. We will then just reboot as normal and enter bitlocker (due to safeboot being off)
Things we’ve noted
- The Fog Server is set up on a spare computer running the latest version of Ubuntu and Fog
- The Computer has ethernet running into a 5 port gigabit switch, the other three ports are occupied by mine and my colleague’s workstations and a spare ethernet cable which we’ve used on all laptops we’re testing for pxe boot.
- we did not set up option 66 and 67 at first on our firewall but pxe boot on the ThinkPads and XPS worked prior to this and afterwards
- The Dell Ethernet adapter seems to have a separate MAC address, not sure if this plays into the issue.
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@CwillQCA One more thing of note. We’ve tried other adapters that we had on hand that were manufactured by other companies and they did not give us the option to PXE boot.
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@CwillQCA I also image multiple models of Dell machines using FOG. A couple of things to check:
- Dell USB Adapters support MAC passthrough, but some Dell machines require this to be enabled in BIOS.
- In my experience, machines with Secure Boot turned off and Bitlocker disabled work the best. Try decrypting the harddrive / disable secure boot (if not already done).
- There are USB C Dell Ethernet Adapters also, those may work better.
- It doesn’t make sense that FOG worked without Option 66 and 67 being setup, but presumably you are say it is setup on the router (just not firewall?). Double check that both your router and DHCP server (whether this is FOG server or something else) is setup appropriately.
- May be worth getting one of the Lenovo machines and checking what the ipxe menu (image above) spits out different.
It says that DHCP fails, so I would assume it is something to do with the DHCP server or network setup. I am not overly experienced in FOG but hopefully my thoughts have helped.
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@Clebboii Thank you for your comments. I’m following up on your responses below.
- It looks like MAC Passthrough is only a thing on Latitude, Precision, and XPS laptops. We utilize Latitudes.
- We do disable Secure Boot when trying to go into PXE boot. We’re going to try to set up a USB with WinPE to disable bitlocker. What confuses me is that the XPS had bitlocker get triggered when secure boot was off but still made it through PXE. It makes me think Bitlocker isn’t the issue here.
- The Dell USB-C to Ethernet does not support our Dell Inspirons. We tried an Anker USB-C hub with Ethernet and a usb-Ethernet TP-Link adapter on the Inspirons which didn’t give us the option to PXE boot.
- 66 and 67 weren’t set up when it worked on the ThinkPads or XPS. We set it up on our Firewall not our Router. It also worked after enabling.
- Going to look into this once our ThinkPad returns from being issued out as a loaner laptop.