<html><body><span style="font-family:Verdana; color:#000000; font-size:10pt;"><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>I'd like to share a couple bugs I've isolated related to iPXE in the hopes it will be useful in improving the program. I'm not actually on the list so if you wish to reply please do so at krm at fantaplay dotcom.</div><div><br></div><div>The first issue relates to iSCSI boot and is current as of the Jan. 31, 2013 commit. iPXE by design only writes a single NIC to the iBFT. However, in systems with multiple NICs, Windows Server apparently will not activate NIC devices which are not listed in the iBFT. Consequently, only one NIC can be used, which constitutes a crippling limitation in the typical server usage case.</div><div><br></div><div>In my own installation I worked around this by modifying iPXE source code to hardwire a second NIC entry, and this did work, but this is obviously a poor solution. I've explained the issue in more detail here:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://serverfault.com/a/478056/137215">http://serverfault.com/a/478056/137215</a></div><div><br></div><div>The other bug I encountered is also related to the iBFT, but I am not sure it is current as at the time I was using a version of gPXE. The issue related again to multiple NICs being in the system being booted. Here's an excerpt of a post I made on <a href="http://serverfault.com">serverfault.com</a> explaining the issue:</div><div><br></div><div>----</div><div>Suspecting a problem in the information gPXE was placing in the iBFT, I programmed a boot sector which dumps the contents of the iBFT to the screen. Using this I found that the data written by gPXE is under certain circumstances erroneous.<br><br>As mentioned, gPXE only writes one NIC record into the iBFT, but in some situations, the information written to that one NIC record is jumbled up. The MAC address and PCI address will correspond to one NIC [the right one], but the local IP and gateway addresses will correspond to another [the wrong one]. This is most likely to happen if the SAN is not on the first NIC.<br><br>To add to the confusion, this incorrect iBFT information is written if gPXE boots automatically, but when booting from gPXE's command prompt, depending on the exact sequence of commands entered, the correct information may be written.</div><div>---- </div><div><br></div><div>I suspect this problem may be related to what a comment in the iPXE code calls an "Ugly hack" in ibft.c, but I haven't confirmed this.</div><div><br></div><div>I hope this info will help improve your project.</div><div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div>Kevin</div><div> </div></span></body></html>