Dell XPS 11 imaged successfully via USB NIC

[KKTwenty101]

Dell XPS 11 (2x USB3.0 ports and wifi - no onboard LAN) just imaged successfully with a LAN7500 USB NIC. I tried all sorts of NIC without success, both with the BIOS, UEFI and various ROM-o-MATIC USB configurations. In the end a good old USB2 startech USB21000S2 worked from the BIOS (legacy) without issue. I didn’t try via UEFI.

Inventory was OK. Imaging windows 10 dropped twice but picked up again (“kevent 2 may have been dropped”).

Posting just in case others are trying to handpick USB NIC

[george1421]

You have found the problem with these ethernet cable less devices running in uefi mode. If uefi mode is enabled you MUST run a supported usb3 network interface (usb to ethernet) to get then to pxe boot. The uefi firmware is more like a linux kernel than what bios was. Your uefi firmware must have a driver for the network interface built in or no pxe boot will happen. Dell does have a supported network interface for pxe booting those XPS systems.

We have a hack to get other network interfaces to pxe boot in uefi mode. This involves using a usb boot image to kick start the process which does away with the firmware pxe booting.

[wwagar]

@george1421
Is this hack available to anyone? I am implementing FOG as we speak, and have a number of notebooks without rj45 that are currently my nemesis. I do not relish needing to use the old usb image method for each and every unit, as you can well imagine.

[george1421]

@wwagar We’ll its less of a hack and more like an unsupported feature that is becoming more popular. I’m hoping it can be a supported feature in FOG 1.5.0 and beyond.

Here is a tutorial I put together to show how to usb boot into the fos engine: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image

[wwagar]

@george1421
Man, you really know how to make a guys’ Monday! I am happily imaging away with the GRUB image over an RJ45 dongle. I cannot see why it would NOT become a supported feature in FOG, it is definitely worth it in time saved on usb stick installs.

Thank you very much!

[george1421]

@wwagar Just remember FOGProject donations gleefully accepted. We need to keep the developers happily charged up with soda and cookies…

I’m glad you have it going. Your request IS under consideration.