-
Junior Member
registered user
Pxe boot with Broadcom BCM5754 does not work
I am using Knoppix 6.7.0 in a PXE boot environment. I have remastered it a little bit to remove some packages and whatnot, but it's pretty vanilla. It's been working fine for a few months now, on lots of different hardwares.
I am having a problem with PXE booting a Dell 740 which has a Broadcom BCM5754 Gigabit card. I believe the problem is the firmware for the card, although I don't know. I can boot the machine using the Knoppix 6.7.0 CD, and it loads the NIC driver fine.
The exact behavior is this: I do the PXE boot, and it loads the minirt.gz image. I see kernel loading lines flash through the screen very very quickly, and then the machine reboots. It appears to be rebooting at the point it's trying to execute udhcp. I can't say with certainty because it is rebooting so fast. Sometimes so fast I barely see the kernel lines show up.
I booted to cd (also Knoppix 6.7.0) to diagnose what modules are loaded etc, and found that the tg3.ko module has 3 firmware files it loads. Those files are not in the minirt.gz packing. (but they are on the cd). So i copied the /lib/firmware folder to the minirt.gz, but it is not working. I then found a post on writing a custom hotplug script in /sbin/hotplug to load the firmware, but that does not seem to be executing, or if it is, it is not working. The article I found targeted Knoppix 5, so maybe it's not applicable anymore. (i tried to put an echo and a sleep to test, but for all i know it's in a background thread)
While I was at it, I modified the init script to not call the restart command in the bailout() function.
this does not stop the machine from rebooting!
I am at a loss as to how to diagnose this. It works from CD but not PXE, which shouts NIC, but I just don't know. I've tried removing the driver altogether to see if the script will pause and complain about no network / driver etc. No joy.
Any one have any ideas on how to approach this?
-
Junior Member
registered user
I booted to the CD and did a lsmod to get a list of everything. Then I used modinfo to go through the list for dependencies.
I then copied all of the .ko files to a drivers folder and renamed them to go in order. (ie, 0_ttm.ko, so that the nouveau.ko file can load).
I repacke the initram and rebooted, and this time the screen locks up with what looks like a kernel panic screen. This makes me feel like I'm moving in the right direction, but ... well, I put all of the kernel modules that I saw in /proc/modules. So I'm stumped again.
-
Junior Member
registered user
So i figured it out. and it makes no sense to me..
Somehow a while ago (like 5 months) I must have made a typeo when creating my customzed initrd. (this was when I was fixing the broadcomm b44.ko driver to work)
The root of the minirt.gz had a file called ..miniroot
I found it by accident. Once I removed that file and re-created the pxe minirt.gz it worked fine.
I don't understand how just this one model of machine broke, or even why it broke. but it's fixed now.
chalk this up to PEBKAC
Posting Permissions
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
-
Forum Rules
WF12F DELL 1TB 7.2K 6GBPS SATA 2.5'' HDD HARD DRIVE ST91000640NS 0WF12F
$25.00
WD 2TB Certified Refurbished Elements, External Hard Drive - RWDBU6Y0020BBK-WESN
$49.99
Western Digital 4TB WD Purple Surveillance HDD, Internal Hard Drive - WD43PURZ
$96.99
Seagate ST9450404SS 9PY066-080 Savvio 450GB 10K 10k 2.5" 6G SAS Hard Drive
$15.00
HGST Ultrastar DC HC520 12TB SATA 6Gb 256MB 3.5" Enterprise HDD- HUH721212ALE601
$89.99
Seagate Exos 7E10 ST2000NM000B 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$29.99
HGST Ultrastar HE10 HUH721010ALE600 10TB SATA 6Gb/s 7200RPM 3.5" Enterprise HDD
$69.99
2TB 3.5" HDD Sata Mixed Brands hard drive Tested Formatted
$18.99
WD 16TB Elements Desktop, Certified Refurbished Hard Drive - RWDBWLG0160HBK-NESN
$209.99
2 PACK Seagate ST1000LM035 Mobile HDD 1TB 2.5" SATA III Laptop Hard Drive
$26.89