X710 network drivers

[NiKiZe]

(2018-05-08 19:40)Transce Wrote:  

(2018-05-08 17:35)NiKiZe Wrote:  In which environment are you running (efi/pcbios) and which buildtarget/ipxe binary are you using. And what do you see in regards to ifstat if you run above mentioned snponly.efi or undionly.kpxe?

So a little backstory... My company, for some reason, doesn't believe that we need DHCP/PXE. So I've created my own workaround to that for my physical server automation. I actually embed a custom bootloader script into an iPXE image to configure a static IP. It then kicks off initrd and kernel without actually chainloading. I know it's hacky, but it was working until I had to deal with these newer generation servers using the X710 hardware.

That is just fine, and is what many uses, but that does not answer my questions
I know what I asked does not directly lead to a solution, but it does help to get you further once we have that information, even if you don't use DHCP it is still a step to see which workarounds are available to you ....

(2018-05-08 19:40)Transce Wrote:  We figured out a workaround on Dell by adding:
PCI_ROM ( 0x8086, 0x1572, "x710", "X710-SFP", 0 ),
To the end of the device list in the intelx.c file. It does allow the devices to show up on ifstat

AFAIK the x7 device is compleatly different from the previous cards, it might be able to initialize, but don't expect more.

(2018-05-08 19:40)Transce Wrote:  Sorry for my novice knowledge, but is there a way to load the snponly.efi or undionly.kpxe via virtual cdrom/usb?

I wish I knew what iPXE binary you where using to not get you into something that won't work ... if you are using pcbios then no, if you are using efi then the snp driver should work fine, you get that in snp.efi build, but it is also included in the ipxe.efi build, again this is why I asked the information to start with....
If no native driver is available for a device in EFI mode, but it has an SNP or NII handle, then that driver is used for those devices instead.
For this to work you should try to configure a box to use network booting in EFI mode, this requires a DHCP. and then have it load snponly.efi. If you can verify that working then you should be able to use snp.efi or ipxe.efi with your embeded script and without DHCP, but for testing and debug purposes the normal PXE boot setup is likely to be invaluable. Even if it isn't what you will be using in the end.