iPXE discussion forum

I seem to be having some issues with my motherboards onboard network adapter. It is a Realtek PCI-E GbLAN controller RTL8111E.

I am booting from a USB stick which has ipxe.usb on it with a customs script.

I am having DHCP problems as it won't accept. I have put in an intel PCI network card and it will accept the DHCP, but I'd prefer to use the onboard gigabit connection.

I don't know if it is a driver issue with the RTL8111E or what.

This is what it shows with DEBUG=dhcp


I could try and do a TFTP boot using the onboard pxe boot client but I'd rather not go through the trouble setting that up on my DDWRT router.

Thanks for any help.

If you build your ipxe.usb with some debug statements for the realtek driver, you might be able to get some more information that could help solve the problem. Build like this: make bin/ipxe.usb DEBUG=realtek:3

(2012-06-27 08:01)robinsmidsrod Wrote: [ -> ]If you build your ipxe.usb with some debug statements for the realtek driver, you might be able to get some more information that could help solve the problem. Build like this: make bin/ipxe.usb DEBUG=realtek:3

I didn't even know that was an option. It seems like a lot of motherboards these days have this ethernet driver.

what is the ":3" for?

Is there anyway toget ipxe to store a log of the debug output?

Yeah, realtek is quite common for onboard ethernet in cheap consumer motherboards.

The :3 is the bitfield that describes what kind of debug information to log, so in binary 3 = 2 + 1, which means the two least significant bits are on, so you're seeing stuff for log level 1 and 2.

To store the output you need to enable either syslog or serial console. http://ipxe.org/console should help you out. Since you're debugging a network driver you mostly need to use serial (and the machine you're trying to boot must have a real serial port, USB isn't supported).

If you don't have a serial port, you can try to use a second network card, and do syslog output via that one, but that is quite an advanced alternative.

You can start with just DEBUG=realtek (which is log level 1) and try to take a photo of the screen, as you did earlier.

The first line of debug information is usually the most important one, so try to ensure it doesn't scroll off screen.