Dell 7010 Lenovo L530 with UEFI enabled, won't network boot.

[Sebastian Roth]

Booting iPXE from USB in UEFI mode seams to be easy. I just did that following those steps:

• format an unused USB stick with FAT32 (simple MBR partition layout is fine!)
• create folders \EFI\BOOT
• download my latest uploaded ipxe.efi binary and copy it to the USB stick as \EFI\BOOT\bootx64.efi
• plug USB stick to the machine and boot from USB

As you can see from the backslashes I prepared this on a windows machine. Can be done on any other system as well I reckon! Booting iPXE from that USB stick worked great on my Fujitsu UEFI PC!

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth said:

So I guess this is more a UEFI/OptiPlex issue than a NIC issue.

This is what I was thinking. While it might appear to be a nic issue, it could also be another component pre nic setup.

I have downloaded Ubuntu 15 and will try to install on this Dell. I tried yesterday with Centos 7 and it kept crashing. I’m suspecting that its the hard drive that I was trying to use (not wanting to mess up the existing install), I just grabbed a disk from my bench and tried to install.

When I get to work in 2 hours I’ll see what happens and update you.

[george1421]

Well trying to install centos 7 on a new out of box hard drive didn’t work I received the same error (something unknown happened). I might have an issue with the install media.

Taking a different approach, I downloaded and booting ubuntu 15.10 desktop. The installer had a live option so I booted successfully into that. I run zorin on my home laptop so I thought that ubuntu woudn’t be that foreign to me. Well, its kind of like traveling to the UK for holiday. (While we kind of speak the same language, there is just enough differences to get into trouble quick).

With that said here is the output of the lspci with different options.

lspci -vv (very verbose)
0_1448370335531_o7010vv.txt

lspci -k (kernel level drivers)
0_1448370353360_o7010k.txt

lspci -vn (verbose with hardware numbers and not names)
0_1448370383197_o7010n.txt

[Wayne Workman]

@Sebastian-Roth I was under the impression that in order for UEFI booting from USB to work, you needed a USB 3.0 drive that is at least 32GB in size… Or at least that’s what I read somewhere once.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Wayne-Workman UEFI USB boot worked great on my Fujitsu machine (USB2.0, 256MB old school stick!). Give it a try on your Optiplex as well.

@george1421 Thank you very much for all the lspci outputs. They all confirm what I guessed: Intel 82579LM comes up as a PCI device in Linux booted in UEFI mode.

Will be interesting to see if it makes any difference for you guys when booting iPXE from a USB stick. And as well I am hoping to get some good hints on my post in the ipxe forums… keeping my fingers crossed.

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth I followed your instructions for creating a uefi boot drive. The creation process worked like a charm. Once the directory structure and file inserted on the flash drive, the usb drive was available in the bios as a viable uefi boot device. Selecting the flash drive from the boot menu worked (the selection process).

BUT the system was in the same state as pxe booting the device. So no luck for us, we have the same results. The positive note is that now we know its NOT a PXE issue.

My setup wasn’t so old school. 8GB cruzer fit formatted with fat32. Then the folders created with one of the .efi files from this thread.

[Wayne Workman]

I sincerely hope that most UEFI devices are not this much of a pain…

The Dell Optiplex 9020 works just fine in UEFI mode with ipxe.efi. Maybe Dell has gotten their act together? Maybe since Legacy mode works fine on the 7010 we can just let this one go.

Hate to say it… but this thread has been living for 8 months now… and I blame Dell for that.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Wayne-Workman You are right that this seams to be a lot of fuzz just to make 7010s work with iPXE in UEFI mode. But possibly we can make this work and help a lot of other people who use iPXE as well. The iPXE devs have been of great help for the FOG project and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give back if we can. But you are right… where should we stop with this?

What about your Lenovo L530?? Same/different issue?

[Sebastian Roth]

Looking beyond the plate I came to find out about efibootmgr command on linux. @george1421 Would you mind booting a 7010 with an EFI capable live linux again and see what you get? Here are two links showing possible outputs: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168725 and http://askubuntu.com/questions/489967/explaination-of-my-efibootmgr-v-output

Could you post the full output here? Just wondering if efibootmgr is able to get the device path (not sure if it is using the same calls then iPXE is?!?

[george1421]

I don’t think this is just a Dell 7010 issue (even though I’ve had issues with this model and certain add in cards) it probably more a bridge interface causing the issue. I’m suspecting that there are quite a few models that were created with this bridge interface since we have two manufactures today with the same issue (Lenovo, Dell).

@Sebastian-Roth No problem, I’ll be back at work in about 2 hours. What ever you need, just let me know.

[george1421]

Here is the output from the efibootmgr. Nothing spectacular was found.
0_1448455704315_efibootmgr_v.txt

If I have time today, I’ll go through the computers in the devices lab to see if there are other computers in our fleet that have issues with efi booting. We have a US national holiday Thursday and Friday this week, so if its not done today it will have to wait.

[george1421]

Testing so far as follows:

o780: UEFI not available.
o790: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting no. Was able to boot via efi flash drive using the debug ipxe.efi no problem. FWIW: The o790 uses the same NIC as the o7010 (82579LM).
o990: UEFU available, UEFI pxe booting no. Same results as 790
o7010: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting yes. Booting either via PXE or generated debug messages.
o9020: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting yes. Booted correctly with either PXE or USB

I didn’t test any laptops for UEFI booting.

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 Great stuff. Do I get this right? 790, 990 and 7010 are all not playing nicely when booting ipxe.efi?? Is it always the same debug messages you see or possibly even different issues? (Please ignore this last question for now as it might be a lot of work for you to take pictures/videos and compare the three of them. But if you do please pay the most attention on the first few lines of debug output!)

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth Sorry to get you excited. I see I should have been clearer with my table.

UEFI pxe booting no == PXE booting in UEFI mode is not supported.

The only system that failed to boot via ipxe.efi is the 7010. All others that supported UEFI will boot the debug version either via USB or PXE (where available)

So the question I have now is, what is physically different between a o790 and o7010 ??? I’m finding it less likely that its a nic issue since both the 790 990 and 7010 use the same intel nic.

[george1421]

Continued testing:

e6410: UEFI not available.
e6420: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting not allowed. Boot via efi flash drive using the debug ipxe.efi no problem.
e6430: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting allowed. Booting either via PXE or generated debug messages (same as 7010. Also noted the 6430 and 7010 where purchased the same year).
e7440: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting allowed. Booted correctly with either PXE or USB
e7240: UEFI available, UEFI pxe booting allowed. Booted correctly with either PXE or USB

OK, so I started digging into the details of the 7010 and the 6340 then comparing them to the 790 and 6420. The thing (from the spec sheet) that is in common between the 7010/6430 is the chip set with Q77/QM77 respectively. The 790/6420 has the Q65/QM67. I thought the graphics were the same between the two but on the 7010 we have the Intel HD4000 (integrated) and on the 6430 we have Nvidia Nvs 5200. All four systems use the intel 82579LM ethernet nic.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 said:

I’m finding it less likely that its a nic issue since both the 790 990 and 7010 use the same intel nic.

That is what I find most interesting…

[george1421]

Looking at the Lenovo L530 specs. That also uses the Intel HD 4000 graphics (same as 7010) and possibly the e6430 (I didn’t confirm that the exact computer I tested had the intel HD 4000 or the Nvidia) Both were options for the 6430.

The L530 chipset is the ivy bridge. The system was manufactured by Lenovo in 2012, which is about the same vintage as the 7010 and e6430 from my fleet. I don’t have enough details yet to draw a positive conclusion but there is a lot of similarities between the L530, o7010 and e6430

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 So at work I have the worst possible set of models for iPXE with UEFI. Nice.

[george1421]

@Wayne-Workman Me too. I’m showing about 400 e6430s and ~800 7010s in our company.

We were going to start Win10 image development. Just after the first of the year. We may have to rethink our deployment tool if the ipxe wizard’s can’t figure this out. I’m a bit spurised that this issue hasn’t came up before. These 7010/e6430/L530s are 3 years old. If we play our cards right, we may age the Dells out before we get around to deploying Win10 to them.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 You can enable UEFI booting on the 7010 with “Legacy Option ROMs” turned on. It will use undionly.kkpxe for network booting just fine, and then boot to Win10 in UEFI mode just fine as well. You just have to rely on WOL for imaging I think, because once it’s booted in Legacy mode over the network, it can’t pass control to the HDD that wants UEFI.

It does work, you will not end the universe if you “cross the streams”. It’s just finicky.