iPXE NET/MAC Ordering

[ts97783]

Hi,

When I boot iPXE and control B to cli, then run ifstat. My MAC addresses seem to be ordered incorrectly. I am seeing this on IBM and HP physical servers with the latest iPXE iso.

I use Foreman to install, however my installs are falling because the OS/Kickstart is expecting eth0 to have mac 38:ea:35:f5:c0 but iPXE orders them like below:

net:0 38:ea:35:f5:c3 Link up
net:1 38:ea:35:f5:c2 Link up
net 2:38:ea:35:f5:c1 Link Down
net 3 38:ea:35:f5:c0 Link Down

In Summary, iPXE is seeing MAC 38:ea:35:f5:c3 and 38:ea:35:f5:c2 as up. But then are not patched or configured on the switch. I think iPXE should order them like below, which accurately shows the MAC and physical presence of a network.

net:0 38:ea:35:f5:c0 Link up
net:1 38:ea:35:f5:c1 Link up
net 2:38:ea:35:f5:c2 Link Down
net 3 38:ea:35:f5:c3 Link Down

As a work around, I manually configure net0 with the appropriate network settings (IP netmask GW) then boot from my Foreman boot file

boot http://foreman.my.domain.com/unattended/gPXE

The install starts to run but then Kickstart fails because the OS wants to install from 38:ea:35:f5:c0. I then have to manually select eth0 from the Redhat/Kickstart menu and everything completes.

This is most likely something I am doing wrong so go easy on me!

Any ideas?

Ta,

[robinsmidsrod]

The reason for this is that iPXE and Linux are using different methods to enumerate the PCI bus and the multi-port network adapters. Your best bet is to include an option in your kernel command line that indicates the MAC address of the boot device instead of just blindly using eth0 inside the kickstart. I think the parameter is BOOTIF=${netX/mac}, but I'm not a RedHat user, so check the relevant Kickstart documentation.

[ts97783]

I will give that a go thanks.

Also thanks for all the work you put into this project.