Intel PXE bootroms

[Felix Rauch]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Gary Jackson wrote:
> I'm having some trouble getting machines using Intel PXE bootroms
> netbooting.  The machine with the DHCP server sees their requests, and
> responds, but the clients don't seem to want to boot with what they've
> been given.  Once Linux is up, I have no problem getting an IP through
> DHCP.  Portfast is enabled on all relevant switch ports.
> 
> I haven't had any problem getting nodes with 3com PXE bootroms to
> boot.

We once had a similar problem with some PXE bootroms. It seems that
some version of them need two ports for their DHCP protocol: They
first communicate on the default DHCP-port (somwhere between 60 and 90
IIRC), but after getting the answer they try another request on a much
higher port (1000-2100?). I once solved that problem by having another
additional PXE-software running on our DHCP-server. Unfortunately I
don't remember the details of that software :-(

You might want to try tcpdump to see if your NICs behave in the same
way.

Luckily we have now NICs which do not have that problem.

Regards,
Felix
-- 
Felix Rauch                      | Email: rauch at inf.ethz.ch
Institute for Computer Systems   | Homepage: http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~rauch/
ETH Zentrum / RZ H18             | Phone: ++41 1 632 7489
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