[ipxe-devel] Link detection on Atheros AR8132

[Sven Dreyer]

Am 11.11.2013 15:07, schrieb Michael Brown:
> You could try using undionly.kpxe instead.  ipxe.kpxe isn't currently
> a sensible option: the ".kpxe" part means that the PXE stack won't
> get fully unloaded, but the "ipxe." part means that the UNDI driver
> will get reloaded from ROM (rather than using the preexisting UNDI
> driver).  This is likely to change at some point in future, but for
> now the choices are essentially:

Okay, my fault. Thanks for clarifying this. I thought that ipxe.kpxe 
would use native iPXE drivers and fall back to UNDI if no native driver 
is implemented.

> - use ipxe.pxe if you want to chainload and use a native iPXE driver,
> or
>
> - use undionly.kpxe if you want to chainload and use the underlying
> UNDI driver.

When using ipxe.pxe, iPXE exits after being loaded by the NIC's PXE 
implementation. That seems logical to me, since there is no native driver.

When using undionly.kpxe, I see the same behaviour as before. Perhaps 
the PXE implementation of the NIC is buggy.

> If that doesn't help, then the Linux atl1c driver looks fairly
> straightforward, and creating a native iPXE driver for this card
> should take only one or two days, given suitable test hardware.  Do
> you know of any plug-in PCI cards using the atl1c driver?

No, I've only device using this driver I've seen is my personal netbook. 
A quick search on the net also doesn't reveal a PCI card driven by atl1c.

For me, this is not a problem. I can live with the pause key, I do not 
netboot the EeePC daily. I just wanted to let you know what I experienced.

Thanks!
Sven