undionly.kkpxe

[Wayne Workman]

Why isn’t undionly.kkpxe the default? If it works with every host that works with undionly.kpxe, but with a larger amount of hosts, then to me this would make it the default.

Although all of our documentation recommends undionly.kpxe, I’ve always recommended undionly.kkpxe via chat and other places - like at work. If it works with more hardware, why not?

[Sebastian Roth]

Good point. But I wonder if ipxe.pxe/kpxe/kkpxe would be even more save to use?? AFAIK the iPXE devs mostly point people to use ipxe.pxe in their forum as it comes with native drivers as well as UNDI capability. I am not really sure which we should make the default?!

[Wayne Workman]

I’ll try out ipxe.kkpxe at home and I’ll set DHCP reservations at work for the comps in my office to try that out on a few of our various models.

The default should be the file that supports the widest range of mainstream devices, like Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo - I don’t care nearly as much about the custom box that some person built in their basement. The file we recommend needs to work with what companies and organizations are buying in bulk - because that is FOG’s target audience.

[JJ Fullmer]

So I came across this the other day and read more into it and found that ipxe.kkpxe may be the way to go. I mostly looked into it due to some older models not working with undionly.kpxe, particularly a HP Pro 3000. I switched my bootfile on the dhcp from undionly.kpxe to ipxe.kkpxe and there have been no issues with any computer booting to ipxe and it may just be me but it does feel a little bit quicker (like a second or two). A few older models have needed different exit types (I’ve had the most success with Grub_first_hdd on older models that don’t like sanboot) But that’s a common problem. So considering that ipxe.kpxe also contains the undionly drivers and that the kkpxe version is more compatible without any downsides that I can see. Why not recommend using ipxe.kkpxe as the default boot file for fog? I’m for it

[Wayne Workman]

@Arrowhead-IT said:

Why not recommend using ipxe.kkpxe as the default boot file for fog? I’m for it

I’m on board for testing it out. I can try it with the handful of models I have in my office and it that goes well, I can make the change for the building.

[Kazso]

On HP 8100 Elite computers undionly and ipxe loaders caused some troubles for me (FOG Trunk version).
Loading some ISOs simply restart the computer (mostly customized WinPE5.0 x64), and iSCSI boot doesn’t work at all.
When i use intel.kpxe or undionly.kpxe.INTEL, everything works fine. But there is a huge drawback though: these Intel loaders only negotiate and work at 10 Mbps.

[JJ Fullmer]

@Kazso What kind of troubles.
I have HP 8000 elites on my network and they boot without issue on ipxe.kkpxe (and undionly.kpxe for that matter), I can’t imagine an 8100 is all that different in terms of network

[Kazso]

@Arrowhead-IT The 8100 series seems to be “special”. This is the only HP series (from 7800 to 8300), where i ran into this issue (booting WinPE 5.0 ISO restarts the computer and iSCSI boot via sanboot errors out).
I already contacted HP, because even the iSCSI boot built into the bios auto-negotiates and works only at 10 Mbps, which makes iSCSI kinda useless. I guess if they fix the iSCSI issue, then ipxe might work as well.

[JJ Fullmer]

Just a little update on this.
I’ve had ipxe.kkpxe as my default bootfile for the last month or so now.
For the most part things seem to go faster and better and all is well.
However on a few select computer models, all exit types fail to boot to hard drive. It’ll boot to the fog menu and to any fog tool, just not to the local disk.
I have ran into this on 2 models.
The HP 280 G1 and HP Prodesk 400 G1
The fix for both of these was giving the computer a dhcp reservation and setting the filename option for just that computer back to undionly.kpxe and it worked again. (I haven’t had a chance to try ipxe.kpxe to see if this was a kkpxe vs kpxe boot file issue)
In one instance on the HP 280 G1 the local disk boot worked with a Grub exit type on ipxe.kkpxe when using F12 to boot to network, but it didn’t work when network boot was set as first in the boot options.

So I ran into a weird problem on 2 computer models using ipxe.kkpxe as the default.
I haven’t run into any computer that wouldn’t boot at all with this bootfile. Just the random local disk from pxe menu not working on the 2 models out of probably about 20 different models or so. It’s a pretty diverse network.

[JJ Fullmer]

@Arrowhead-IT Another quick update on this.
I confirmed that it’s the kkpxe vs kpxe that causes the local disk boot issues.
So I would say it’s not a bad idea to reccomend ipxe.kpxe as the default boot file and use .kkpxe with dhcp reservations as needed.

In other words, the answer to @Wayne-Workman’s question, is that we ought not default to a .kkpxe file, because on some models the local disk boot option fails on all exit types. However ipxe.kpxe includes all the undi drivers and what not, so perhaps that is a better choice.

[Wayne Workman]

I’m sort of ashamed that I haven’t done any of the things I said I’d do in this thread yet I’ll make it a point to test out the various file types soon.