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

[rath at mglug.de]

 On Fri, 23 Aug 2013 11:52:46 +0200, Robin Smidsrød wrote:
> 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.
>>splash
>> 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.

 ok, i will try this asap.

 tfh
 Oliver