Shuttle SB75G2 - No PXE boot?...

[Tim S]

Hi all,

I've got one of the above, based on an Intel 875 chipset with a Broadcom
57xx NIC.

Can't for the life of me persuade it to attempt a PXE boot.

I have a working linux DHCP server (well, it works as far as handing out IPs
to known MAC addresses - currently the entries to support PXE are
untested).

I also have a working atfptd server (tftp will get the
file /tftpboot/pxelinux.0 sucessfully).

However, despite enabling the LAN Boot, making Boot From LAN the first item
and telling the Broadcom BIOS that it's allowed to boot, I cannot get it to
even send a DHCP packet (or a BOOTP packet) to the server - I've tested for
both with tcpdump on the DHCP/TFTPD server.

I've tried forcing the Shuttle to boot from LAN via teh manual boot menu
(press ESC) and that's ignored too.

I've even tried setting the Broadcom boot BIOS thingy to "BBS", int18, int19
and "auto". I don't ever see a "Press F12" message either.

I know these things *can* PXE boot - so I am wondering what I might have
done wrong. Must be something silly?...

Thought's gratefully received :)

Cheers

Tim

[Michael Perry]

Post by Tim S
Hi all,
I've got one of the above, based on an Intel 875 chipset with a Broadcom
57xx NIC.
Can't for the life of me persuade it to attempt a PXE boot.
I have a working linux DHCP server (well, it works as far as handing out IPs
to known MAC addresses - currently the entries to support PXE are
untested).
I also have a working atfptd server (tftp will get the
file /tftpboot/pxelinux.0 sucessfully).
However, despite enabling the LAN Boot, making Boot From LAN the first item
and telling the Broadcom BIOS that it's allowed to boot, I cannot get it to
even send a DHCP packet (or a BOOTP packet) to the server - I've tested for
both with tcpdump on the DHCP/TFTPD server.
I've tried forcing the Shuttle to boot from LAN via teh manual boot menu
(press ESC) and that's ignored too.
I've even tried setting the Broadcom boot BIOS thingy to "BBS", int18, int19
and "auto". I don't ever see a "Press F12" message either.
I know these things *can* PXE boot - so I am wondering what I might have
done wrong. Must be something silly?...
Thought's gratefully received :)
Cheers
Tim

Hi Tim-

I've worked with a variety of broadcom chipsets and found a bit of
variety in how we got PXE booting to work in the past. One issue we did
find was that often the boot sequence was set to a timeout too low and
that the broadcom network cards would simply not be given enough time to
get the information from the server. You may want to check what timeout
value you set in the server. I've seen broadcom chipsets be agonizingly
slow and we reset the timeout value in the server in the hopes of
coaxing the broadcom chipset to boot. Another thing we noted on a few
different servers was that the broadcom network card had firmware
updates available which materially affected at a positive level the
ability of the chip to PXE boot. Particularly broadcom chips on the
sunfire servers we used had timeout issues which were positively
affected by downloading and applying new firmware patches from Sun.

After applying the firmware upgrades, we got reliable PXE booting. Its
worthwhile to mention though that there is an amazing variety of these
chips out there and we did not find a 100% fix for each one of them.

[Tim S]

Post by Michael Perry
Hi Tim-
I've worked with a variety of broadcom chipsets and found a bit of
variety in how we got PXE booting to work in the past. One issue we did
find was that often the boot sequence was set to a timeout too low and
that the broadcom network cards would simply not be given enough time to
get the information from the server. You may want to check what timeout
value you set in the server. I've seen broadcom chipsets be agonizingly
slow and we reset the timeout value in the server in the hopes of
coaxing the broadcom chipset to boot. Another thing we noted on a few
different servers was that the broadcom network card had firmware
updates available which materially affected at a positive level the
ability of the chip to PXE boot. Particularly broadcom chips on the
sunfire servers we used had timeout issues which were positively
affected by downloading and applying new firmware patches from Sun.
After applying the firmware upgrades, we got reliable PXE booting. Its
worthwhile to mention though that there is an amazing variety of these
chips out there and we did not find a 100% fix for each one of them.

Thanks Michael,

I'll try a BIOS flash - there is an update for mine.

Cheers

Tim