Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 74904
PXE booting problems
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:47:01 EDT
PXE booting failed on my box. Firstly the documentation talks about the kernel being found in places it wasnt secondly the PXE kernel when I found it on the CD isnt working on my box (hangs on boot). I extracted the kernel from the bootnet img file and that one worked! This may be a box specific oddity of course VIA EPIA board, Eden 550 processor (fanless C3) - uses the 586 kernel. With the bugzillad details fixed PXE worked nicely
I am getting this too with a presumably identical Mini-ITX box with a fanless Eden, when booting via PXE. I've tried using both the bootnet.img/vmlinuz from images/pxeboot and those extracted from images/bootnet.img; in both cases, the kernel hangs after printing "Ok, booting the kernel." Any hints? BIOS setting changes needed? Kernel parameters to try passing?
I have a suspicion now actually. Go into the BIOS, enable the floppy controller (I know the board doesnt have a floppy). Try again
Still no joy - are you using BIOS defaults otherwise? And the kernel images from the 8.0 bootnet.img?
Pretty much BIOS defaults. I think I set it to do the proper memory check, power up on poweron (in case of a power failure) and floppy on. I may have told it I have an fd0 as well. Im currently using the 8.0 boot kernel from the floppy image rather than the PXE one but I think they may even be the same.
Doh, yeah, the vmlinuz from bootnet.img is the same as the pxeboot/vmlinuz (different initrd's though). There are two threads on http://forums.viaarena.com/categories.cfm?catid=28 about getting PXE working with Linux, no definitive answers though :) You haven't flashed the BIOS?
I've not flashed the bios
I've seen simular beheaviour on IBM Thinkpad laptops. But I've also found a solution. When you get the question if you want to enter kernel parameter. Do this, but you don't have to fill any in. So I just always press enter twice. This will make it boot.
Oh yes! Thankyou. Confirmed that workaround works. I see from the -cmdlinearg patch we are applying to pxe, if you *don't* press a key to enter kernel parameters, then it defaults to using: strncpy(cmdline,"ks console=ttyS0,115200",23); I don't know what 'ks' means but this is switching to a serial console, right, so the apparent "hang" you get is actually just the console disappearing? I think the prompt should be changed to *display* the defaults so you know this is going to happen, or just to remove using a serial console by default. e.g. Enter kernel parameters (default: "ks console=ttyS0,115200"):
ks = kickstart. I agree the default parameters are extremely bogus
I consider these parameters a bug. The most sensible default would be add no kernel parameters. I don't really understand why even default to a serial console. I've never had to use that. The best solution would off course be that you can set these default parameters in a config file without the need to recompile. Any feedback on what the plans are with this bug ?
We are dropping support for pxe in the RHEL release and will drop it from future Red Hat Linux release. We are recommending that you use dhcp/pxelinux for X86 platforms.