[ipxe-devel] Loading Bootrom via bios-pxe to avoid zeroing mac-address?

[Robin Smidsrød]

On 23.08.2013 11:03, Oliver Rath wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> for many cards there are bootroms available with ipxe. Is it possible
> (and does it make sense) to chainload this boot"rom" via bios-pxe rather
> than the undionly.kpxe?
> 
> Background: The realtek gbit-cards 8111E (not sure yet for the name,
> esp. for the last letter "E") gets his firmware dynamicly from bios
> while powering on the machine. After this - I guess - the OS (here:
> win8) tries to upload a "better" firmware to the card, which fails. Then
> the iSCSI-booted client tries to reboot. The NIC finds (or doesnt?) his
> broken firmware and resets his mac-address to 00:00:00:00:00:00 for the
> next pxe-boot. This I want to avoid.
> 
> Any suggestions beside my own?

I think there might be some EEPROM issues here. Have you tried building
ipxe.usb like this?

make bin/ipxe.usb DEBUG=realtek

And when you boot this USB stick, what does it tell you about the
eeprom/mac state? A picture of the screen with a cameraphone would be
very useful to understand what's going on.

-- Robin