TFTP Problems

[Wayne Workman]

@bacelo said:

iPXE initialising devices…ok
iPXE 1.0.0+ (3a02) – Open Source Network Boot Firmeware – http://ipxe.org
Features: NFS FTP HTTP HTTPS ISCSI DNS TFTP VLAN AoE bzimage ELFMBOOT PXE PXEXT
Configuring (net0 00:22:64:ba:2b:56)…

Shortly after this part is when the kernel and init are downloaded.
Those are stored on the FOG server here: http://x.x.x.x/fog/service/ipxe/
The local path to them on CentOS 7 / Fedora would be: /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/

This is what mine looks like:

Make sure those files exist. If they aren’t there or the file sizes look weird, re-run the fog installer.

Turn your firewall off for testing purposes.
CentOS 7 / Fedora: systemctl stop firewalld
Set SELinux to permissive for testing purposes.
CentOS 7 / Fedora: setenforce 0

Try again.

If you have no luck then, then just re-run the fog installer and see what that does.

Also - a packet capture from the FOG Server during the attempted network boot would be really helpful.

[bacelo]

@Wayne-Workman from what I can see I am missing the last two files.

[Wayne Workman]

@bacelo Well, I’m running FOG Trunk and you’re running 1.2.0 right? So it won’t be entirely the same.

[george1421]

@bacelo What you need to make sure is the bzImage files and in the init.xz files exist in this location. This part I’m a bit fuzzy on, since I don’t have a FOG server in front of me right now. I think the next thing that should load is the PXE menu. The linux kernel and inits are loaded once you make a selection on the pxe menu.

does the following url generate a text file (actually the pxe menu)

http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php

(I did that from memory so it might be wrong) but once the ipxe kernel is loaded it should try to load the default.pxe config file that is redirected to the URL above. That is what creates the ipxe menu. Again I’m doing this from memory and the egg nog may be impacting what I thought I knew.

[bacelo]

Ok so I got to this point and all the files are there I reinstalled linux and Fog server and it does the same when it should boot the menu the pc just restarts.

[Tom Elliott]

does the screen, during bootup, remain black for a long time? You don’t see the menu, or the menu times out before you see it? This is an important distinction.

[bacelo]

@Tom-Elliott No, this appears:
iPXE initialising devices…ok
iPXE 1.0.0+ (3a02) – Open Source Network Boot Firmeware – http://ipxe.org
Features: NFS FTP HTTP HTTPS ISCSI DNS TFTP VLAN AoE bzimage ELFMBOOT PXE PXEXT
Configuring (net0 00:22:64:ba:2b:56)…
then it just restarts the pc. I am going to update the Bios to see if it could be something with the Bios. Other then that I just don’t know what to do or how to see if everything is correct with the boot file.

[Tom Elliott]

@bacelo Are you willing to try trunk?

I think you’re seeing the “console” error that 1.2.0 users often times had.

[bacelo]

@Tom-Elliott So what sould I do to fix that??

[bacelo]

@Tom-Elliott I am willing to try anything to make this work

[Tom Elliott]

@bacelo Can you hit me up in chat?

I can maybe teamviewer?

[bacelo]

@Tom-Elliott can it be in 1 hour you would save my life

[Tom Elliott]

it sure can be.

[bacelo]

OK thanks to Tom Elliott I got the fog server to work kind of the only thing that is missing is on booting the network card it loses the connection to the lan link card and I have to press S and type dhcp and it gets back up and then o type exit and the menu boots up. The problem is that I have to be physically at the client PC for this to work so if I were to deploy the software it won’t go because I have to press S DHCP and then exit and then it will pop up the menu

[Sebastian Roth]

@bacelo We’ve reworked the iPXE script lately. Seams like you are in a (DHCP) situation where our script does not properly work. Sounds like an interesting issue. Have you tried activating port fast setting on the switch? I guess Tom has talked about this as well.

Could you please take a picture with your smartphone of all the messages you see and the keys/commands you use to get to the boot menu? To me this sounds like a “timing” issue. When booting up the script does pretty much that (dhcp command). So I wonder why it works when you do this by hand.

[bacelo]

@Sebastian-Roth
This is the message that I get when it stops. What I do is Press “s” then I type “dhcp” it configurs the dhcp and says ok
then I type “exit” and boom the menu appears . And yes I think it has to do with the timing because it loses conection to the lan card when it runs this script.

[Sebastian Roth]

@bacelo Ok, this really means DHCP is timing out. Can you upload a picture of the command ifstat run in the iPXE shell?

Have you looked into portfast settings on your switch yet? http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/10553-12.html

What NIC (exact brand, model and possibly PCI IDs) is it?

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth I would tend to agree here with the network being (partially) at fault. I have seen spanning tree cause an issue because it takes too long to move the port into a forwarding state once the link up signal has been sent. By then OS has already given up on the link thinking that it is down. This will generally cause dhcp issues FOG or not, for the first minute or two the port link is up. They created RSTP and portfast to address the slow 30-60 seconds wait for STP topology check.

One quick way to check this is to turn off spanning tree all together on that port where the device is. (ONLY TURN IT OFF to test if spanning tree is your problem or not. Do not leave the port in this state if it is in the user domain)

[Wayne Workman]

I have to agree with the others, this sounds like portfast isn’t turned on. Sounds instead like spanning tree is in use.

Did Tom put you on FOG Trunk or are you still on 1.2.0 ?

[bacelo]

@Wayne-Workman yes it’s fog Trunk but what should i do know?