PXE Boot FreeBSD with Etherboot

[Brooks Davis]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 10:30:05AM +0200, Norbert Koch wrote:
> > > > It seems there are some problems with using pxeboot in 
> > combination with
> > > > the network boot code from the etherboot project.  I have tried many
> > > > combinations of options with no success.  The result is very 
> > similar to
> > > > the following photo I found:
> > > > 
> > > > http://photos.night-shade.org.uk/photo.php?photo=6364
> > > > 
> > > > I have tried it both on my local machine and in vmware with the same
> > > > result.  It seems that somehow etherboot is not setting up the
> > > > environment the way pxeboot expects it too.  Now the native pxe boot
> > > > code in vmware does load pxeboot correctly and I have successfully
> > > > booted freebsd in vmware, however I can't get the pxe boot code on my
> > > > network card to load at all, hence my need for etherboot.  Also, both
> > > > pxeboot from FreeBSD 4.11 and 6.0-BETA2 crash the same way.  I'm
> > > > assuming this is really a bug in etherboot, but I'm not sure 
> > how to get
> > > > a crash dump to play with.  With vmware, it seems like I 
> > should be able
> > > > to save a memory image to examine, but I'm not sure how to do that.
> > > > Any ideas on a fix for this?
> > > 
> > > Just my experience. I never handled to successfully pxeboot FreeBSD.
> > 
> > pxeboot works fine! i have some 50 hosts pxeboot'ing that say so.
> > 
> > it's etherboot loading pxeboot that does not work.
> 
> I did not try etherboot. I tried a pc104 board with
> bios's internal pxe function for the integrated intel 82551/9er chip.
> And it is reported that e.g. linux boots successfully on these boards.
> I manage to boot from disk with etherboot (5.2.4), but not using pxe.

Some versions of the intel PXE support are broken and don't support the
necessicary features for FreeBSD's pxeboot.  The happen to support other
methods, but are deficients.  Upgrading the firmware on the chip can
fix this.  I've done it with fxp(4) cards in the past.

-- Brooks

-- 
Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
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