Quick or Full Host Registration fails - screen goes black

[kinger37]

Any ideas on this one:

This issue is affecting me with both Fog 1.2.0 and now Trunk, running Ubuntu 14.04 Server. The host machine I am trying to register is a Dell Optiplex 7040M. I am using iPXE and everything works right up until I select either Full Host Registration and Inventory or Quick Host Registration and Inventory. Once I select either one of these the screen goes black - same thing happened on FOG stable and FOG Trunk (just updated it today using SVN).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Wayne Workman]

My work has around 1k new Optiplex 7040s, they register and image fine with trunk. 1.2.0 may or may not work with the model, I haven’t tried it (and probably never will).

It sounds like Secure Boot might be turned on in the firmware, you can turn this off by turning on the machine, tapping F2, and going to the security area.

[george1421]

Are these setup in uefi or bios (legacy) mode? If uefi, as Wayne suggested make sure secure boot is disabled. I have a 7040 sitting on my bench to be imaged tomorrow so I can confirm the settings.

[kinger37]

@george1421 I currently have it set to UEFI and Secure Boot off. I tested it again today and now receiving this error after the FOG PXE menu sits for a couple seconds “Chainloading failed, hit ‘s’ for the iPXE shell: reboot in 10 seconds”. I will start sifting through the forums to see if I can find anything on that error.

[Tom Elliott]

@kinger37 The chainload error is likely me, quietly, hopeing the ipxe stuff was fixed. What file are you trying to boot? My guess ipxe.efi?

[kinger37]

This post is deleted!

[kinger37]

@Tom-Elliott Hi Tom i just confirmed that all my UEFI boot options are using ipxe.efi.

[george1421]

@kinger37 Just to rule out some other issue, if you switch one of these target computers to bios (legacy) mode does it register correctly?

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 I know what’s wrong, but I don’t know how to fix it :(.

[kinger37]

I also want to add something i just noticed - I have to use UEFI or my hard drive (M.2 256GB PCIe SSD Samsung PM951 NVMe Drive) isnt detected under Legacy boot. @george1421 Do you have the same hard drive as I do?

[kinger37]

@george1421 Hi George, I just finished testing that and you are correct - it registers correctly, however when i check inventory of that machine - no hard drive installed

[george1421]

@kinger37 Let me fire one up, I got sidetracked today (not in a good way).

[george1421]

@george1421 OK, our 7040’s come from dell preconfigured for legacy. So in legacy mode I can see the M.2 disk without issue. It shows up under the boot sequence as PM951 NVMe …

Make sure your legacy rom setting is turned on under advanced boot options. (but again this is only if you want to run legacy mode).

Let me switch this over to uefi mode and see what I can break.

[george1421]

@george1421 Update:

I pxe booted using ipxe.efi into the fog menu. It sat for about 20 seconds at initializing devices then eventually called up the FOG iPXE menu. From there I selected check compatibility and the screen went black (like you noted). It was black for so long I turned around and started looking for firmware updates. Then I had a phone call. When I turned around the computer was sitting at the compatibility menu. This was probably about 5 minutes from the time I booted. I ran the compatibility test and the network card passed and the drive failed to detect.

I know with these systems we had to add 2 KBs to our windows 7 build so that windows 7 could detect these drives. Not sure about the FOS engine.

I’m going to do the following.

1. Update my FOG dev box to the latest release
2. Search for firmware updates for the 7040
3. USB boot the FOS Engine to try to get into debug mode so I can attempt to interact with the drive.

[george1421]

@george1421 Update 2: Success

I had success, but not sure what really fixed it. The 7040 is booting in uefi mode.

1. I updated the 7040 firmware firm 1.2.8 to 1.4.4 (note this is not a 7040M but a 7040 SFF)
2. I first attempted to boot the FOS engine from a usb stick and it worked and it was fast!! With the FOS engine I was able to see the disk and they showed up as an NVM disk with its crazy name.
3. Next I updated the fog trunk to what ever the latest release was about 10 minutes ago (8460)
4. I then pxe booted into the fog menu, this time iPXE took about 6 seconds to initialize hardware. I selected the compatibility test and this time it detected the hard drive and network adapter.

So what fixed it? Either the firmware update or the FOG trunk update. I have not yet deployed any images to this computer, but I suspect it will work, but I don’t have a uefi/gpt image to test on it.

[kinger37]

@george1421 Hi George - I just had it work - without doing an updates - not sure what changed. The only that i did try was doing the Legacy boot after scheduling a task to capture the image. I am going to try a straight from the factory 7040 and see what happens.

If it fails again though I will update firmware and FOG trunk.

Thanks again for all your help!

[Wayne Workman]

Just my personal experience - FOG Trunk from a month ago and a 7040sff out of the box worked fine. We are using them in UEFI mode, but are using legacy for network booting.

[kinger37]

@george1421 @Wayne-Workman I have just updated to the latest SVN 5858 and updated the firmware of the 7040 to 1.4.4 - wasnt getting a plain black screen anymore but kept failing on registration “An Error has been detected” “Cannot find disk on system”

Solution to that issue was in my BIOS\UEFI settings - under Device Config-Sata Operation: Raid On was enable and I had to change it to AHCI.

Testing deploying a image right now.

[Wayne Workman]

@kinger37 #wiki worthy

[kinger37]

@kinger37 Deployment was successful - I think I have it working now - thank you for everyones help.

@TOM ELLIOTT On my first time booting into FOG PXE menu I receive the chainloading error, but after rebooting and going back in - it doesnt show up again.