Ipxe connection timed out (4c126092)
-
@godlike Lets try this. If you have a very cheap/inexpensive unmanaged network switch. Place that switch between the pxe booting computer and the building network switch. This will help us test to see if your troubles are related to spanning tree being set to default settings on your building network switch.
-
@george1421 Its a TP-Link Gigabit switch (TL-SG116E) , but im pretty sure its not ever configured. Its been at my workplace before i came here. And its currently between the pxe booting computer and the main router. So Router - TPlink switch - target computer. The main host computer is also built on the switch if that makes any difference
-
@godlike Well I looked into this switch and it has advanced settings like QoS, VLAN, IGMP Snooping, etc. But there is no reference to spanning tree protocol (STP). Its hard to understand that if this device has all of those other features but does not have a setting for spanning tree, strange.
I’m still thinking that we want to try one of those dumb 5 port unmanaged switches to see if that is the problem. The issue you have at the moment is outside of FOG itself, but rather infrastructure as far as I can tell.
-
@george1421 Ordered a switch, will respond after i have tested things out with the STP. Should arrive tomorrow
-
@Godlike It’s kinda strange this workes just fine sometimes but fails on other tries in your setup. Definitely try out the other dumb switch. First connected in between your current setup but as well you might want to try swaping out your existing switch with the dumb one for testing.
-
@sebastian-roth Finally managed to get some time to test it out and no use, still the same issue. some laptops dont have the issue but some take up to 6 restarts for it to actually work. A icybox lan USB lan adapter sometimes makes it work more often in these cases, im not sure if it has any affect or not. The only error with that im gettin is the following:
tftp://x.x.x.x/default.ipxe… Connection timed out (http://ipxe.org/4c126092)
I have reed the website in the brackets but still came to a conclusion as in why does it work sometimes, but the other times it just doesnt. Could it really be a lease issue? DHCP not working properly or maybe i have multiple ports open (66,67…)?
Would installing dnsmasq be of any use here in this case?
Thanks and sorry for the later reply
-
@godlike said in Ipxe connection timed out (4c126092):
Could it really be a lease issue? DHCP not working properly or maybe i have multiple ports open (66,67…)?
Hmmmm, from what I know about this I don’t think it’s a DHCP issue. I say this because usually we see different errors then. Those that have real DHCP issues don’t get to the stage where it tries to load default.ipxe as far as I know. It should fail out earlier if getting an IP from the DHCP is an issue. As well this is already half way into the PXE booting process. The network ROM already requested an IP from the DHCP once, pulled the iPXE binary from the FOG server and executed it. This iPXE loaded then again requests an IP from the DHCP and tries to pull default.ipxe from your FOG server.
The main difference between the first and the second round is that the network ROM is using an internal driver provided by the NIC manufacturer while inn the second step the iPXE loaded driver is in play. I can imagine the iPXE driver to be at fault here.
I think compiling iPXE from the latest official source code is a quick first step to see if that can fix the issue: https://docs.fogproject.org/en/latest/reference/compile_ipxe_binaries.html
-
@sebastian-roth Thank you for the reply, i will try it out and see if it has any changes.
-
@sebastian-roth Reinstalled fog to see if that would fix the problem, it didnt do much. I expected as much since the version i see on screen when booting is iPXE 1.21.1+ (gc64d) which is supposedly the latest version when looking around the git hub.
When running ls -la /tftpboot/.efi the files seem to be reinstalled/updated.
What is interesting is that when i first installed FOG the whole internet started acting a bit strange. Sometimes wifi doesnt connect (Connected, secured. No internet) errors, similar with cable connections. What usually fixes the issue is ipconfig /release - ipconfig /flushdns - ipconfig /renew and its all back to normal, connects instantly. Perhaps its not getting a decent connection during the pxe boot when it needs to download through tftp? Its a wild guess from me.
Also what i should probably mention is that when i first installed FOG it was on a test laptop to see how it would work, but i didnt properly uninstall it i suppose, just formated the disk. Made a new install on a machine im running on right now. Could that affect anything as well?
Thank you in advance!
-
@godlike said in Ipxe connection timed out (4c126092):
What is interesting is that when i first installed FOG the whole internet started acting a bit strange.
Haha! Sorry but it sounds kind of funny that installing FOG would have an inpact on the “whole internet”.
Sometimes wifi doesnt connect (Connected, secured. No internet) errors, similar with cable connections. What usually fixes the issue is ipconfig /release - ipconfig /flushdns - ipconfig /renew and its all back to normal, connects instantly.
Hmmm, I am not sure I can follow here. FOG is installed on a Linux system but the mentioned commands are from Windows. How does that connect at all?
Perhaps its not getting a decent connection during the pxe boot when it needs to download through tftp? Its a wild guess from me.
We have way too little information to be able to answer that question.
Also what i should probably mention is that when i first installed FOG it was on a test laptop to see how it would work, but i didnt properly uninstall it i suppose, just formated the disk. Made a new install on a machine im running on right now. Could that affect anything as well?
Definitely not.
-
@sebastian-roth The windows commands were related to the internet part only. Its most likely not related to FOG install at all that the internet started acting up, so i cant speak much about it. I will do some testing with a different isp later to see if the problem could be in the router or switch being configured badly. So far the whole thing is working its just a bit inconvinient to have to restart when it fails
-
@godlike @george1421 Hey did you ever come to a resolution on this issue. I was getting the exact same error and I placed a “very cheap/inexpensive unmanaged switch” between the pxe booting computer and the building network switch and everything was fine. Did you guys ever figure out what setting on your building network switch needed to be tweaked to resolve Ipxe connection timeout?
Thanks!
-
@austinjt01 If the inexpensive switch masked your problem, then inspect the spanning tree setting on your building switch. You need/should be running one of the fast spanning tree protocols like portfast, fast-stp, rstp, etc. Standard spanning tree starts forwarding data too late for FOG.
