New BIOS = Problems with iPXE...

[MultimediaMan]

Dell Latitude E6320 A13 BIOS with 54a86 iPXE Release = No issues.
Dell Latitude E6320 A15 BIOS with 54a86 iPXE release = iPXE appears to exit cleanly, but Laptop stops at a blinking cursor.

Laptop does have AHCI enabled.

Nothing in the syslog or debug to indicate a problem; iPXE exits out normally. I know HPA has fought similar issues with pxelinux.0 in the past.

Changelog from Dell indicates Microcode update for Future Processors, Updated vPRO MEI, and an ACPI Update.

[mcb30]

(2012-11-06 12:01)MultimediaMan Wrote:  Dell Latitude E6320 A13 BIOS with 54a86 iPXE Release = No issues.
Dell Latitude E6320 A15 BIOS with 54a86 iPXE release = iPXE appears to exit cleanly, but Laptop stops at a blinking cursor.

Which build of iPXE is this? If it's undionly.kpxe, have you tried undionly.kkpxe (which sometimes manages to work around return-to-BIOS problems such as this)?

Michael

[MultimediaMan]

(2012-11-07 13:29)mcb30 Wrote:  

(2012-11-06 12:01)MultimediaMan Wrote:  Dell Latitude E6320 A13 BIOS with 54a86 iPXE Release = No issues.
Dell Latitude E6320 A15 BIOS with 54a86 iPXE release = iPXE appears to exit cleanly, but Laptop stops at a blinking cursor.

Which build of iPXE is this? If it's undionly.kpxe, have you tried undionly.kkpxe (which sometimes manages to work around return-to-BIOS problems such as this)?

Michael

54a86: Latest before the past couple of day's commits.

I will try kkpxe and get back to you today.

---

DOH! Actually, I was using ipxe.pxe;

PXE Boot undionly.kpxe (~65k TFTP File) -> ipxe.pxe (~350k HTTP File) -> Return to BIOS Hang

Again, 54a86 build.

[robinsmidsrod]

@mcb30: I've actually seen this behavior on my HP 6730b laptop with a tg3 onboard nic when I try to exit out of my menu script. On an older version of iPXE (using ipxe.pxe) it exited immediately, but since ~1-2 months now it hangs for about a minute before it continues the boot process (and it does continue). I have not updated the BIOS recently. All my other machines (including VMs) exit immediately.

I guess I should probably do a git bisect to figure out where it actually started to go wrong.

[MultimediaMan]

I will do a git bisect as well.. it's not back too far, I'm sure.

[MultimediaMan]

From another thread: http://forum.ipxe.org/showthread.php?tid=6775

Code:

#!ipxe
#Boot the first local HDD
sanboot --no-describe --drive 0x80

Is an acceptable workaround; I does mean a little governance needs to be put in for OS Standards - Thou shalt boot thine OS from the First Fixed Disk (...some maniac will undoubtedly want to boot from an alternate drive on the fourth Sunday of every month that has a blue moon, after all...), but this works.