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    Infinite booting loop

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    • D
      Duffney
      last edited by

      I have some new dell Optiplex 990s that I have been deploying and changing it to boot to pxe first. The problem is it finds the fog and then shows the splash screen but then reboots to the splash screen again never booting to the HDD share. I have to click esc to get it to boot the the HDD. This also happens on the new dell latitudes. Has anyone figured this problem out? It is confusing the end users a great deal.

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      • B
        BryceZ
        last edited by

        [URL=‘http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=FIX:_Chainloading_alternate_SYSLINUX_to_force_boot_from_first_hard_drive’]Chainloading[/URL] is what you’re looking for.

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        • D
          Duffney
          last edited by

          [quote=“BryceZ, post: 804, member: 2”][URL=‘http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=FIX:_Chainloading_alternate_SYSLINUX_to_force_boot_from_first_hard_drive’]Chainloading[/URL] is what you’re looking for.[/quote]

          Would you mind walking me through the first few steps of that? How might I upload it to the tftpboot?

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          • I
            ITCC
            last edited by

            is this still an issue, we had this with our Optiplex 790’s & fixed.

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            • D
              Duffney
              last edited by

              [quote=“IT @ CC, post: 872, member: 252”]is this still an issue, we had this with our Optiplex 790’s & fixed.[/quote]
              I am still having the problem, but have not had time to try modifying the chain loading as suggested.

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              • I
                ITCC
                last edited by

                Yeh, chainloading is the answer… Somehow i missed the posts.

                Once you get into it, changeloading was easy and only took 10 mins.

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                • D
                  Duffney
                  last edited by

                  Could you tell me where you placed the lines below in the default file. I did this and it just boots to hdd is that the point? is the splash screen supposed to show up at all?

                  [COLOR=#000000] DEFAULT fog.next
                  LABEL fog.next
                  kernel chain.c32
                  append hd0[/COLOR]

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                  • B
                    BryceZ
                    last edited by

                    Duffney, what is your TIMEOUT set to? TIMEOUT is counted in tenths of a second, so TIMEOUT 50 is 5 seconds. I’m not a 100% sure on this, but I think without a TIMEOUT set it will just go straight to the DEFAULT option.

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                    • D
                      Duffney
                      last edited by

                      Timeout is set to 30. I found out the chain loading completely bypasses everything and goes straight to the hard drive. Which would be fine If I could register a host manually or with the client. For some reason it does not work. I’m opening another thread for that problem.

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                      • johnomazJ
                        johnomaz
                        last edited by

                        i didn’t really understand why you had to change the Default option when you coudl have just modified the Boot from hard disk option. here is what the top of my DEFAULT file looks like:

                        [CODE]DEFAULT vesamenu.c32
                        MENU TITLE FOG Computer Cloning Solution
                        MENU BACKGROUND fog/bg.png
                        MENU MASTER PASSWD [S]*********[/S]
                        \n
                        menu color title 1;36;44 #ffffffff #00000000 std
                        \n
                        LABEL fog.local
                        kernel chain.c32
                        append hd0
                        MENU DEFAULT
                        MENU LABEL Boot from hard disk
                        TEXT HELP
                        Boot from the local hard drive.
                        If you are unsure, select this option.
                        ENDTEXT
                        \n[/CODE]

                        Seems to be working fine for me now on 790s. Going to have one of the other techs see if it works for 990s too.

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                        • B
                          bardicverse
                          last edited by

                          had this issue with my Dell 990 lab too. Changed the settings as required, now the loop just stays on the menu screen, over and over again. So, still no go on that one. Only workaround is to not allow PXE boot as primary boot option, and swap it in the bios when we need to run tasks. a bit of a pain until a proper solution can be figured out.

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                          • neodawgN
                            neodawg
                            last edited by

                            I also have the same issue as bardicverse only with Dell 390 computers. My coworker fixed his fog server with chainloading and 390s. However mine doesnt work, I am thinking that its because mine is a 64bit server and his is a 32bit.

                            Thoughts?

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                            • B
                              bardicverse
                              last edited by

                              Ah, that makes sense. the 990s are running 64 but, but the 755s I had no problem with were 32 bit.

                              By the way, what’s the default setting for the local disk, in graphic mode? Im trying to change it back, because it messed up my auto local disk boot. What’s the line for the local disk supposed to be by default again?

                              LABEL fog.local
                              localdisk0 <--------- I don’t think this was right, what was the original setting?
                              MENU DEFAULT
                              MENU LABEL Boot from hard disk
                              TEXT HELP
                              Boot from the local hard drive.
                              If you are unsure, select this option.
                              ENDTEXT

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                              • neodawgN
                                neodawg
                                last edited by

                                [quote=“bardicverse, post: 4348, member: 1314”]Ah, that makes sense. the 990s are running 64 but, but the 755s I had no problem with were 32 bit.

                                By the way, what’s the default setting for the local disk, in graphic mode? Im trying to change it back, because it messed up my auto local disk boot. What’s the line for the local disk supposed to be by default again?

                                LABEL fog.local
                                localdisk0 <--------- I don’t think this was right, what was the original setting?
                                MENU DEFAULT
                                MENU LABEL Boot from hard disk
                                TEXT HELP
                                Boot from the local hard drive.
                                If you are unsure, select this option.
                                ENDTEXT[/quote]

                                I more so ment that the fog server itself was running 64bit, both mine and my colleges 390s are running Win7 64.

                                [CODE]LABEL fog.local
                                localboot 0
                                MENU DEFAULT
                                MENU LABEL Boot from hard disk
                                TEXT HELP
                                Boot from the local hard drive.
                                If you are unsure, select this option.
                                ENDTEXT
                                [/CODE]

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                                • B
                                  bardicverse
                                  last edited by

                                  thanks for that. and yup I got what you meant. I thought it might be a disparity from 32 bit to 64. Are your 390s 32 bit by chance?

                                  My server is 32 bit and the 990s are 64 bit. Though, trying the chainboot fix only caused my computer to not restart, just reloop the fog screen itself over and over. So, I’m not sure what’s going on. Have you tried a 64 bit client yet?

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                                  • neodawgN
                                    neodawg
                                    last edited by

                                    [quote=“bardicverse, post: 4351, member: 1314”]thanks for that. and yup I got what you meant. I thought it might be a disparity from 32 bit to 64. Are your 390s 32 bit by chance?

                                    My server is 32 bit and the 990s are 64 bit. Though, trying the chainboot fix only caused my computer to not restart, just reloop the fog screen itself over and over. So, I’m not sure what’s going on. Have you tried a 64 bit client yet?[/quote]

                                    I have only tried 64bit on both the server and the client. I cannot see any reason why the client OS would matter. I think it has more to do with the new Dells having some BIOS closer to UEFI.

                                    I havent had a chance to try fixing it again, as I just disabled the network boot and just use F12 when I need to image on them. My other projects have taken priority.

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                                    • B
                                      bardicverse
                                      last edited by

                                      makes sense. Ah well, I’ll be poking and prodding on it over the summer once I got these other labs reimaged. Will post back if I come up with a solution.

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                                      • neodawgN
                                        neodawg
                                        last edited by

                                        Just to further prove my 64bit server theory, I had to fix a F10 32bit server to get a Dell Latitude 5520 laptop to stop looping and it worked great.

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                                        • B
                                          BryceZ
                                          last edited by

                                          For those of you experiencing menu looping, please post your /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default file, and perhaps the steps you took in setting up the chainloading. Anything that helps us pin down what’s causing this issue is important.

                                          One thing to consider: the chainloading will return you to the menu if the device you’re booting to does not have a boot partition (though it usually displays an error message for a few seconds before reloading the menu). I’m not sure how it would handle being pointed at a hardware address that does not exist; it is possible that your systems are setup in such a way that your drive is listed as hd1 instead of hd0, which [I]might [/I]be contributing to your problem.

                                          I don’t know why there would be an issue between 32bit and 64bit, though I won’t go so far as to say it’s impossible. I’ve been chainloading from both 32bit and 64bit to both 32bit and 64 bit, and I’ve never encountered an issue.

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                                          • B
                                            bardicverse
                                            last edited by

                                            actually, that would probably be the case. Dell hard drives come partitioned with a recovery partition, or disk 0, and the next partition is the main body partition, which would probably be disk 1. I’ll have to test that theory out later. currently uploading 2 new images to the server.

                                            I think in future practice, I’m going to wipe the dell recovery partition outright, so I can use the resizable image option. But since we’re already underway with the summer workload, it’ll have to wait.

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