[ipxe-devel] Best practices for troubleshooting UEFI General Protection Exceptions when booting iPXE?

[Capriccio, Peter]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Brown [mailto:mcb30 at ipxe.org] 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 7:47 AM
> To: Capriccio, Peter; ipxe-devel at lists.ipxe.org
> Subject: Re: [ipxe-devel] Best practices for troubleshooting UEFI General Protection Exceptions when booting iPXE?
>
> On 03/02/16 08:49, Capriccio, Peter wrote:
>> This system had the onboard 1Gb Ethernet, 4-port "331i" adapter (Broadcom-based), plus an add-on InfiniBand QDR/Ethernet 10Gb 2-port "544+FLR-QSFP" adapter (Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro-based) running in 10Gb Ethernet mode. The system was running in its UEFI mode (it also supports running in a Legacy BIOS mode). I was able to boot iPXE successfully from the 331i adapter but not from the 544+FLR-QSFP adapter -- the latter throwing the exception. However, I was able to boot to elilo 3.16 and SYSLINUX 6.03 (EFI) from the 544+FLR-QSFP adapter.
>
> Did you check for a firmware update from Mellanox?
>
> If the problem still occurs on the latest firmware, let me know and I'll loop in the relevant people at Mellanox.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael

Well, I think the firmware update would be coming from HPE -- that is, while Mellanox is the OEM, there is some kind of collaboration between Mellanox and HPE, so I'm pretty sure the releases come from HPE, but I can't speak with any real certainty/authority. That said, looking back through my logs, it looks like there was a firmware update after the latest release of the Service Pack for ProLiants that I unfortunately missed. The system reported the firmware version as:

  Family Firmware Version                           [02.34.50.00]
  EFI Version                                       [14.7.24]

but the HPE Support Center has version 2.35.5100-Flex-3.4.648(29 Oct 2015), and from the filename, it looks like the UEFI version was bumped to 14.8.43. I don't see any references to a fix for a GPE in the release notes, but you never know, and unfortunately, I don't have another one of these cards to test it with.

So, double fail on my part for missing the firmware update and for not knowing how to properly enable debugging (I'm still interested in knowing how to do that).

If I can get my hands on another one of these cards, I'll bring the firmware up to the latest HPE supported release and let you know the outcome.

Thanks for taking the time to respond,

Pete C. (employed by, but not speaking for, HPE Financial Services)