Paul de Weerd wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm trying to install an older Dell system, an Optiplex GX-1. This is > a 600 MHz P3 with the latest BIOS (A10) from H^HDell. It has an > onboard xl(4) that supports PXE booting so I decided (after several > broken floppies) to take the pxeboot-route. > > The system will come up and start DHCP'ing for an IP address. When it > gets a lease it downloads the pxeboot bootloader from my tftp server > and executes it. This looks like : > > 3Com PXE, version 0.99n.02
Version numbers less than 1 are scary on commercial products. They are annoying on free products. Doesn't anyone FINISH anything anymore? > Copyright (C) 1997,1998 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. > > (C) Copyright 1999,2000 Lanworks Technologies Co. > a subsidiary of 3Com Corporation > > DHCP MAC ADDR: 00 B0 D0 18 26 4F > CLIENT IP: 192.168.94.46 MASK: 255.255.255.192 DHCP IP: 192.168.94.60 > probing: pc0 com0 com1 apm pxe+[0.99] mem[640K 383M a20=on] > disk: fd0 hd0+* > net: mac 00:00:00:00:01:00, ip 0.0.0.0, server 0.0.0.0 >>> OpenBSD/i386 PXEBOOT 1.06 > > After this, it tries to arp for its own IP address : > > 19:01:52.566774 0:b0:d0:18:26:4f ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 0806 60: arp who-has > 192.168.94.46 tell 192.168.94.46 > > After three such attempts, I get a 'PXE-E11: ARP timeout.' error and > the system tries again. After four of these errors the machine crashes > with a double fault trap (warning : typed in by hand) : > > trap: 13(43747): double fault > cn_tab=0x4c660 > eax e0b ecx 4d734 edx 4e894 ebx 4e89c > esp fd68 ebp fd88 esi 4e0a0 edi 4e880 > eip 8 eflags 4e894 cs 246 ss 10 > ds 10 es 10 fs 10 gs 10 > Code dump [0x8]: > f000e2c3 3ef000e2 b23ef000 b23ef0 f000b23e 3ef000b2 b23ef000 b23ef0 > Memory dump [0x1a000]: > 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 > 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 > 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 > 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 > 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 > 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 > Stack trace [0xfd68]: > d 74000000 34740000 4347400 43474 8000434 80004 800 > 8 46000000 2460000 24600 246 94000002 e8940000 4e89400 > 4e894 9c0004e8 e89c0004 4e89c00 4e89c a00004e8 e0a00004 4e0a000 > fe0a0 600004e0 d7600004 80d76000 4380d760 a84380d7 fda84380 fda843 > fda8 60000fd 1e060000 41e0600 41e06 a000041e e0a00004 4e0a000 > 4e0a0 9c0004ea e89c0004 4e89c00 4e89c d0004e8 20d0004 20d00 > > [this output looks quite similar when produced several times, although > many values differ, lots of stuff is the same] > > I also tried with a published ARP entry for this IP address on my > DHCP/TFTP server : > > $ sudo arp -s 192.168.94.46 0:b0:d0:18:26:4f permanent pub > > This crashes the machine with a similar double fault trap immediately > after sending out the 'is-at' reply in response to the first ARP > who-has request. > > So there's a couple of strange things (in my opinion) : > > o pxeboot shows MAC and IP with lots of 0's > o the system tries to ARP for its own IP > > My question is, does the PXE implementation of the xl(4) card suck or > is there some bug in pxeboot(8) ? It manages to download pxeboot > correctly, but I'm not sure if that makes it an otherwise good PXE > implementation. Has anyone seen this sort of behaviour before ? yes, unfortunately. Looks like we get junk at the same places, Dell GX1, G1 and GX100 systems are where I saw this problem as well. :) I've seen similar problems on fxp cards, however most of those are flash upgradable, whereas 3Com cards don't seem to be. The PXE ROMs of that vintage didn't seem very good... Our PXE boot process seems to work better on newer-vintage ROMs than it does on these first-generation products. I have placed some of these cards in the Right Person's hands to see if it can be improved, but that person has been pretty busy lately... The good news is, 3Com has a PXE boot floppy that works for almost all their Ethernet cards (inc. ISA products), free for the download. All things considered, /for my uses/, the floppy (or burning it to a bootable CD) is more useful than the boot ROMs. Nick.
