[ipxe-devel] SuperMicro SYS-1028U-TR+ with Intel X710-DR2 nic card

[Michael Brown]

On 29/03/16 20:41, Todd Stansell wrote:
>      iPXE> show net0/bustype:hexraw
>      net0/bustype:hexraw = 908b5424048b04248902896204895a0889720c897a10896a1431c0c38b5424048b44240885c07501408b62048b5a088b720c8b7a108b6a1459ff32c3b8d23b01

Nice catch.  It turns out that there is a path whereby 
dev->desc.bus_type will not be set to any value (and so will be left as 
zero): this can happen if undibus_probe() detects the underlying UNDI as 
being neither PCI nor ISAPnP.  It will still continue to allow the 
device to be used, since dev->desc is not required for actually using 
the NIC.  However, netdev_fetch_bustype() believes that drivers will 
always initialise dev->desc.bus_type (which seems like a reasonable 
assumption, since it's generally set by the bus driver before the NIC 
driver ever gets called).  This eventually leads to 
netdev_fetch_bustype() treating NULL as a string pointer.

Should now be fixed in:

   http://git.ipxe.org/ipxe.git/commitdiff/70509e6

If you retry with current master, you should now get a "No such file or 
directory" from "show net0/bustype".

> Adding tcpip debug logs, I see some of these:
>      Unrecognized TCP/IP protocol 51

I believe that's an IPSEC packet.

> Is there some way to help determine if the problem is within iPXE somewhere or
> the BIOS or the NIC itself?  It feels like all of these problems are the
> failed handoff of the bus info above, so it can't load proper network drivers,
> etc.

The bus info failure is interesting.  It suggests that pxeprefix.S was 
unable to retrieve the device information.  You should see an error 
message somewhere in the "PXE->EB" block of text (before the iPXE 
startup banner is printed).

As to loading proper network drivers: you're currently using 
undionly.kpxe.  By definition, this uses the underlying UNDI driver 
(provided by Intel), not an iPXE native driver for that card.  For a 
native driver, you would use e.g. ipxe.pxe instead.

8086:1572 appears to be handled in Linux by the i40e driver.  We don't 
yet have a native driver for that card.  However, Intel has historically 
been exceptionally good at preserving backwards compatibility between 
their NICs: we are able to use essentially the same datapath code for 
everything from the original e1000 up to the 82599 10Gig virtual 
function driver.  There's a good chance that i40e cards can be natively 
supported in iPXE with minimal effort.

You could even push your luck and try adding a PCI_ROM() line for 
8086:1572 to drivers/net/intelx.c.  :)

Michael