Can't boot to PXE

[Wayne Workman]

@roee I ask because in the packet capture you posted, I’m seeing several DHCP offers from 192.168.1.83. This doesn’t necessarilly mean you’re running DHCP on the windows 7 machine, but it could mean that your Fog server’s NIC is not bridged, but might instead be NAT’d.

Looking further at it, I see there are several DHCP Requests to 192.168.1.6

But why is your Windows 7 machine offering DHCP ?
And still, among none of these requests and offers do I see options 66 and 67 set.

Have you looked at our WiKi page on this?
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Modifying_existing_DHCP_server_to_work_with_FOG

[george1421]

@roee just be aware that there IS a dhcp server inside vmware workstation. It should only be for the internal host only networks. Make sure this isn’t configured incorrectly.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 said:

just be aware that there IS a dhcp server inside vmware workstation.

Had no idea.

[roee]

@Wayne-Workman

I couldn’t find on VMWare workstation anywhere a DHCP settings, or anything else that might use as DHCP of some sort.
The NIC is set to bridge for sure. see attached file.

[george1421]

@roee I have vm workstation 11 and the setting is under the edit menu Edit->Virtual Network Editor…

As long as the dhcp server is not bridged to the physical adapter you should be all right. In my case I just made sure the vmnetX logical adapters weren’t bound to the physical network adapter. There should be isolation so your PC should not respond to dhcp requests.

It may be doing something with dhcp and the nat service, but again this is abnormal.

[Sebastian Roth]

Do you have “VMware DHCP Service” in your windows service listing (Administrative Tools…)? Maybe try stopping this service and see if you still get those DHCP packets from 192.168.1.83…

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth said:

Do you have “VMware DHCP Service” in your windows service listing (Administrative Tools…)? Maybe try stopping this service and see if you still get those DHCP packets from 192.168.1.83…

Great point, I have that service disabled on my workstation. I didn’t want any crosstalk.

[roee]

Hey guys!

Any other ideas or notions or should I just abandon FOG?

Thanks

[Sebastian Roth]

@roee Have you disabled VMware DHCP service? Any changes? If I don’t have a proper PCAP file with all the DHCP packets I can just guess at what is going on in the network. This is like trying to catch a fish with bare hands but having my eyes shut (just joking!).

As you already said - same problem with Acronis PXE. This has nothing to do with FOG itself. Using Windows DHCP server is fine (others have got it working perfectly) but this is nothing we can do with an installer script or something. We are more than happy to give advice and help to get this fixed but we need information to do that. Provide a full PCAP file (best if using a monitoring port or hub on the client side), post screenshots of your DHCP server settings.

Full PXE spec you can find here: ftp://download.intel.com/design/archives/wfm/downloads/pxespec.pdf (looks a bit overwhelming on first sight but it’s definitely a good source to understand how all this works - including port 4011 thing)
Something interesting I just found in the spec (page 17/PDF page 19) is that it also talks about DHCP option 43. @Wayne-Workman You know a lot more about windows DHCP than I do. Have you ever used option 43? Hopyfully we see screenshots of the DHCP settings and you can have a look.

[Jaymes Driver]

@roee

You can always give DNSMASQ a shot, it usually helps to resolve issues when the files are not being delivered to the clients.

It works as a proxy DHCP server and only offer ip addresses to the machines looking to pxe boot. And helps the clients to resolve to your FOG Server.

I would recommend installing DNSMASQ and using the settings from the wiki to see if that alleviates any of the issues you are experiencing.

I had to use this in my environment when we were Novell and when we switched to Active Directory. I also still left options 66 & 67 set to the fog server and the boot file respectively.

https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Using_FOG_with_an_unmodifiable_DHCP_server/_Using_FOG_with_no_DHCP_server#DNSMASQ_settings_for_iPXE

[george1421]

@Jaymes-Driver What we haven’t been able to clearly identify is of there is currently a proxy DHCP server setup. So adding a second one would only confuse the issue. Under normal conditions most dhcp servers should not bind to port 4011 or even try to use it.

At the heart of the issue this is not a FOG problem, but one with the OP’s environment. I’m suspecting some legacy code running from some previous imaging environment like (RIS, WDS, or a commercial product). But that is only speculation without a clean and complete pcap file.

[Wayne Workman]

@Sebastian-Roth DHCP Option 043 looks like this on Server 2012

Here’s the rest of that option’s text:

You can type in the binary or ASCII fields as you can with the other windows DHCP options.

I’m not using this option though.

[roee]

Thank you all.
I will update in case resolved.
Take care!