Need to support as many devices as possible!

[NiKiZe]

I started using PXE and later iPXE for the exact same purpose. Running memtest and posting the result to b800.org for automatic logging to the service log for example.

In legacy mode Using undionly.kpxe will work on all machines with almost no exceptions. There was/is some buggy Realtek chips, but those might not even work inside windows unless you are using the exact drivers that they used during production, so not really a iPXE issue.
For some known working nics I have added chaining into full ipxe.pxe since it works better:

Code:

iseq ${netX/chip} undionly && || goto notundi

echo ${esc}32;1mWe have UNDI: should try upgrade${esc}22;37m
iseq ${netX/busid:hex} 01:14:e4:16:92 && chain -ar ${boot-url}/ipxe.pxe ||
iseq ${netX/busid:hex} 01:14:e4:16:b5 && chain -ar ${boot-url}/ipxe.pxe ||
#iseq ${netX/busid:hex} 01:10:ec:81:68 && chain -ar ${boot-url}/ipxe.pxe ||
#iseq ${netX/busid:hex} 00:14:e4:16:92 && chain -ar ${boot-url}/ipxe.pxe ||
:notundi

If you go for efi it becomes a different beast. ipxe.efi works best on most machines, but there is a few buggy firmware implementations where snponly.efi is needed instead, and then there is a few other machines where snponly.efi does not work. still using ipxe.efi is in my experience the best choice.


In any case, make sure you upgrade to the latest version if you have any issues, and spend a bit extra time for both creating backups when building, and having the build process as automatic as possible.