Unable to register and inventory new Dell PCs

[mattyb]

Previous Thread

On my previous thread I laid out the details:
Running FOG 1.2 on Ubuntu 12.04LTS. This server has worked flawlessly for several hundred machines until this new batch of Dells. The BIOS is so current it’s not even listed on the Dell website. We also tried rolling back to an older version of BIOS, no difference. I’ve run updates on the FOG server to ensure that all the requisite software is current (MAP). The only update I haven’t performed is on Ubuntu itself and I don’t intend to do that.

I’ve attempted compiling my own Linux kernel with the current 4.4.1 and adding in my own modules. I was successful except for the last part and am out of time to try to learn compiling in order to solve my own problem.

So I’m back. I have Dell XPS8900s and Dell Latitude laptops (NIC Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller RTL8167). In the last thread, mods assumed that it was the NIC given the errors I was receiving when trying to PXE these machines.

I’ve also tried a known working USB NIC that is compatible with Linux to bypass the onboard NIC when registering with FOG.

Any new suggestions?

[Wayne Workman]

what boot file are you using? is secureboot enabled? is the computer in BIOS or UEFI mode? is the network adapter in BIOS or UEFI mode?

[mattyb]

@Wayne-Workman
I’m not sure how to answer #1?
#2 - no
#3 - BIOS (classic)
#4 - BIOS (classic)

[Sebastian Roth]

@mattyb Usually we have pretty much all the NIC drivers included - if available in the main line kernel! But we are more than happy to add drivers to the kernel as needed. To be able to find the correct driver we need exact information on NICs used in those machines. Otherwise there is no way we’d know which driver to look for.

You are saying RTL8167. Is that both machines? I guess not as I cannot find anything useful with XPS8900 and RTL8167 in google. Please boot both machines (guessing Windows is installed) and get the PCI IDs of the NICs as seen here: http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/find_PCI_ID.php (we need the NIC, not the SATA controller ;-))

[mattyb]

@Sebastian-Roth I started to type them out and realized it would be more efficient to post the images.

[Sebastian Roth]

@mattyb Great! Now we are talking…

• Intel I219-V on the XPS8900: Should be supported in kernel newer than 4.1 (http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/E1000E.html - check the PCI ID 8086:15b8). We definitely have the e1000e driver included in the kernel! See in the previous thread where user swhite reported his I219-LM working with kernel 4.1.2. Your I219-V should work as well I am sure.
• The Realtek RTL8168 should be working since kernel version 2.6.19 (http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/R8169.html). And we definitely have this driver compiled into our kernel.

Can you please get the very latest kernel again:

mkdir /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/backup3
mv /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage* /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/backup3
cd /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/
wget --no-check-certificate https://fogproject.org/kernels/bzImage -O bzImage
wget --no-check-certificate https://fogproject.org/kernels/bzImage32 -O bzImage32

Register the clients’ MACs by hand in the web interface and schedule a debug task. Boot up the client(s) and make sure you see kernel version 4.4.1 with uname -r.

[george1421]

It looks like the 3470 may use a realtek RTL8151GD This should be the same nic that is used in the Dell 3020 (mid 2014) ven_10ec&dev_8168&subsys_06f21028&rev_0c

The xps8900 appears to use an Intel I219-V ethernet adapter ven_8086&dev_15b8&subsys_06b81028

@mattyb For future reference you can copy and paste the vendor ID into notepad. It would make it easier for us to look up the numbers instead of trying to read a screen shot. (sorry old eyes).

[Sebastian Roth]

@mattyb Although the linux kernel comes with r8169 driver it seams like a lot of people have issues with it. Ask google. A lot of people end up compiling the driver provided by realtek to make their NICs work. See here: https://unixblogger.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/the-pain-of-an-realtek-rtl8111rtl8168-ethernet-card/ (and there are newer references as well)

I will look into building a kernel for you that comes with the realtek driver for testing. Is the Latitude 3470 64 bit arch? I guess so!

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 Good catch. Didn’t think there would be another NIC with the exact same PCI ID but named RTL8151GD. Can’t find a linux driver for that one…

@mattyb Just found this: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Realtek_8169_driver_problem

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth What I’m finding is that RTL8151 (if that is what is really installed in that computer), is an orphan network adapter. The RTL8111 and RTL8169 drivers will not work for it. And so far all I’m seeing is windows only drivers for it.

[edit] interesting, the rtl 8151 (as well as the 8150) may be a usb based network adapter (yes even for LOB).
http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/USB_PEGASUS.html This is only one web site, but there are several other references that define this as a usb based network adapter.
[/edit]

[mattyb]

@george1421 Sorry - I was in audit mode and booted it up long enough to grab the requested information.

Following the thread it looks like I’m out of luck for the Latitudes? Can you explain what it means that the NIC is an orphan? Does it literally mean it’s not part of a NIC family with common drivers?

[Scott Adams]

It sounds to me like this might be new UEFI type of BIOS. If that is the case, you would need to make sure that you have a .efi listed as your bootfile option 67 in your DHCP. When dealing with UEFI devices, I currently use ipxe.efi and it seems to work pretty well.

[mattyb]

@Scott-Adams It is UEFI capable, but I’ve disabled it and using classic bios. It actually comes from the factory that way too since it was pre-loaded with a Win7Pro lic.

[Wayne Workman]

@mattyb The boot file you’re using is defined as DHCP option 067 on windows dhcp, and as option next-server in linux ISC-DHCP.

[george1421]

@mattyb said:

Following the thread it looks like I’m out of luck for the Latitudes? Can you explain what it means that the NIC is an orphan? Does it literally mean it’s not part of a NIC family with common drivers?

Out of luck? Not even close yet.

Orphan in the since it is not widely supported. This is something that we haven’t come across yet. So it will take a little detective work on your part to get this sorted out.

What I want you to do now is get a linux live distribution (like ubuntu desktop) that boot that latitude with it. We will need to run a few commands to try to get the proper driver for that device.

[mattyb]

@george1421 OK - I have to deploy these laptops this week but I will try to hold one back for now.

[mattyb]

@george1421 I’m on it now, booted to 14.04.4 live USB

[Sebastian Roth]

@mattyb Chat…?!

[george1421]

If that dell does have a usb nic then we can use what Tom posted here to enable the usb nic in the FOS kernel.

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6752/surface-4-network-boot-and-image/22

has_usb_nic=1

Stand by here, lets see how that surface 4 works out.

[Sebastian Roth]

After a long and interesting debugging session we found out that those two NICs (I219-V and yes really a RTL8168, not RTL815x!!!) don’t want to play with FOG 1.2.0. Updating the kernels to current does not help because those NICs don’t seam to come up the way our old FOG 1.2.0 network init script tried to bring them up! Didn’t expect that and went a very long way to find it out. Thanks again to mattyb for being that patient. We booted those machines in debug several times and keyed in the network init commands till I noticed that the older inits are doing something very different.