[ipxe-devel] iPXE fail to execute dhcp on old system

[Arnaud Adamy]

Hello,

I have a problem using iPXE. And after a long search on the web with no result, I give up. I’m asking for your help to try to understand where the problem could be located.

But first, I’ll explain the structure of the network I’m in charge.  Moreover take into consideration I’m not a network specialist.
There is a router with pfSense acting as chain-loader for PXE, pointing to a FreeBSD 9.1 server with PXELinux on it.
Each machine (UNIX and Windows) gets an IP from the DHCP server of the pfSense machine.
Each machines except one can start from their inboard PXE ROM program and load the PXELinux menu without problem.

So problem is about the machine that cannot work with iPXE.
I want to boot it from the LAN to make Clonezilla backup without the need of a CD-ROM
It is a Pentium III 650Mhz machine with 256 MB of RAM and a 3Com 3C905C-TX PCI NIC with WOL.
The MBA firmware support PXE 2.0. But when I try to boot from LAN it returns the following errors:

    DHCP MAC ADDR: 00 04 XX XX XX XX
    CLIENT IP: xxx.xxx.xxx.27 MASK: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DHCP IP: xxx.xxx.xxx.5
    GATEWAY IP: xxx.xxx.xxx.1
    TFTP.
    PXE-T01: File not found
    TFTP.
    PXE-T01: File not found
    PXE-E3B: TFTP Error – File not found
    
    Network boot aborted.

But do the DHCP request well.
Others PCs from the oldest to the newest (and VMWare) work fine so I think there is a bug with the 3Com firmware.
This machine has a multiboot with Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000. It is mainly used for old MS-DOS software not compatible with modern Windows.
The multiboot management is provided by a GRUB4DOS bootloader.
So my idea was to disable the PXE ROM of the NIC and to use GRUB4DOS to boot iPXE.
For test purpose I’m using the live CD (1.0.0+ (c692a)) from your web site. It load SysLinux and iPXE and stop after the “Features:” sentence. Just the cursor blink forever.
When I enter the console with Crtl+B, I get:

    iPXE> ifstat
    net0: 00:04:XX:XX:XX:XX using 3c905c-tpo on PCI00:0a.0 (closed)
      [Link:up, TX:0 TXE:0 RX:0 RXE:0]
    iPXE> ifopen
      net0: 00:04:XX:XX:XX:XX using 3c905c-tpo on PCI00:0a.0 (open)

It opens.

    iPXE> ifclose
      net0: 00:04:XX:XX:XX:XX using 3c905c-tpo on PCI00:0a.0 (closed)

And it closes correctly.

    iPXE> dhcp net0
    _

And from here nothing happen.

To try to see it the problem exists on older versions. I’ve created a floppy with gPXE 1.0.1 from ROM-o-matic for my NIC and I get nearly the same result:

    net0: 00:04:XX:XX:XX:XX on PCI00:0a.0 (open)
      [Link:up, TX:0 TXE:0 RX:0 RXE:0]
    DHCP (net0 00:04:XX:XX:XX:XX).

And stop the same way as above...

And the live CD works on all the other machine I tested it.
I don’t know what to do to resolve this problem and I really hope you will be able to help me.

Thank you very much for your help, in advance.
I am at your disposal for any clarification.

Arnaud
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ipxe.org/pipermail/ipxe-devel/attachments/20130817/c3429a63/attachment.htm>