FOG boots to menu but can't open anything else Lenovo Thinkpad Helix
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Trying to deploy an image to a Lenovo Thinkpad Helix. I’m using a Lenovo-branded USB-ethernet adapter. It boots successfully to the FOG menu, but when I go to any menu option – host registration, system information, deploy – other than “boot from hard drive”, it goes to a blank screen with an underscore cursor in the top left. The cursor blinks once, then stops. It hangs at this point. I’ve left the computer sitting for at least 30 minutes without any changes.
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Try different boot files. Change this in the DHCP server - option 067/bootfile. A listing of available files can be found by running this command on your fog server:
ls -lahRt /tftpboot -
I’ve tried both ipxe.efi and snponly.efi. Just now confirmed that booting legacy rather than UEFI works correctly. I was able to register it as a host. UEFI is still behaving identically on both ipxe.efi and snponly.efi.
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Based on what I’m gathering, it seems ipxe.efi/snp.efi/snponly.efi apparently don’t have drivers for that particular NIC. Just a guess. Legacy PXE Booting will still work, albeit a slight bit of workaround to get there.
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@3541 Can you confirm that you have the latest firmware on this device? We’ve seen some flaky uefi firmware on the lenovos in the past.
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So in doing some research I’ve determined that iPXE just flat-out doesn’t have drivers for USB ethernet adapters. It does however appear that someone has a fork of iPXE that has drivers for the exact adapter I’m using. I’ll look into building from that.
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@3541 IF you are willing to go that far to get these systems to image, you might want to look into building your own ipxe kernel with the rom-o-matic site or pxe-less booting into the fog menu
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6400/usb-boot-uefi-client-into-fog-menu-harder-way
or maybe a better choice is to just skip over ipxe
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image -
@george1421 Decided to use the bootable USB solution. Worked perfectly. Thanks for the help.
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@3541 said in FOG boots to menu but can't open anything else Lenovo Thinkpad Helix:
iPXE just flat-out doesn’t have drivers for USB ethernet adapters.
That’s not correct, many people here use USB to Ethernet adapters to image with FOG. Support is less with them of course, but saying they don’t have support is incorrect. Often - it’s the host’s firmware that is the issue, or the adapter itself, not iPXE.
