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

[Thomas Miletich]

Hello Arnaud,
can you check if ifopen also freezes if the network cable is disconnected?

I have also pushed some modifications to the 3c90x driver here:
https://git.ipxe.org/people/meteger/ipxe.git/shortlog/refs/heads/3c90x

One of the commits has a very slim chance of fixing your issue, I wouldn't
hold my breath though.
You can get it with:

git clone git://git.ipxe.org/people/meteger/ipxe.git
cd ipxe/src
git checkout 3c90x

Then build iPXE as usual.

Thomas


On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Arnaud Adamy <arnaud.adamy at free.fr> wrote:

>   Thanks.
> The card works perfectly in Windows 98 SE, in Windows 2000 and with Debian
> 7.
> In the BIOS, the plug&play option is set to off, the mainboard an ISA
> card, an AGP video card and some PCI cards too.
> The PC needs to be used today, but there is another 3C905C-TX in a box,
> I’ll try with it in another computer. And if it works, I’ll exchange the
> two cards.
> Maybe it is an IRQ or a bus problem. I’ll try to put the card in another
> PCI location and test it again the late afternoon.
> Moreover I’ve done tests again early this morning and it freeze every
> time. I cannot explain why if worked the first time....
>  I confirm the vendor is 10B7 and the device id is 9200
>
>  Arnaud
>   *From:* Thomas Miletich <thomas.miletich at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, August 19, 2013 12:08 PM
> *To:* Arnaud Adamy <arnaud.adamy at free.fr>
> *Subject:* Re: [ipxe-devel] iPXE fail to execute dhcp on old system
>
>   I just tried to reproduce the problem, but everything worked fine here.
> I tested with a 3c905C, PCI ID 10B7:9200, the same as yours.
>
> Could you put the 3c90x card into another machine and see if iPXE freezes
> in that machine too? Does the card work in Linux or Windows or whatever OS
> you use?
>
> This should be valuable information in trying to track down the issue.
> I'll also see if I can spot anything obvious in the driver code.
>
> Thomas
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Arnaud Adamy <arnaud.adamy at free.fr>wrote:
>
>>   What I wanted to say is if I don’t press Ctrl+B, the message to press
>> it disappear and only the messages to the Features line remain.
>>
>> I just made the test again with the debug version I’ve build, and indeed,
>> when I use ifopen or ifopen net0, it crach with the same messages as the
>> debug for dhcp do.
>> And I retested with the live CD and it freeze too.
>> That’s strange... I’ve done hard reboot, stop and run again, but the fact
>> is, now it crash every time with ifopen.
>>
>> I have done a memtest86 with 3 passes and 64% of the fourth and no errors
>> detected. The machine is very stable and haven’t had any problem in the
>> past.
>>
>>   *From:* Thomas Miletich <thomas.miletich at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 17, 2013 8:48 PM
>> *To:* Arnaud Adamy <arnaud.adamy at free.fr>
>>  *Subject:* Re: [ipxe-devel] iPXE fail to execute dhcp on old system
>>
>>      Thanks for the log file.
>>
>> I'm quite puzzled by the output. You said you could open and close the
>> interface manually, yet the log shows that it freezes in the open function.
>>
>> It seems to freeze right when we send the receive ring buffer address to
>> the card.
>>
>> Can you get us another log, where you execute the following commands:
>> ifopen net0
>> dhcp net0
>>
>> Although there shouldn't be any difference, as dhcp calls open
>> internally, I'd like to know why your manual ifopen didn't freeze.
>>
>> > 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:
>>
>> I'm not sure what you're saying here. iPXE freezes after the "Feature"
>> line, but you can press CTRL+B to get to the iPXE prompt? iPXE should try
>> to autoboot after the feature line.
>>
>> If it doesn't try to autoboot, please run memtest86+ or something similar
>> on the machine and let it do a couple of passes, just to make sure we're
>> not seeing any weird hardware issues.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Thomas
>>
>
>
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