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PXE Problems and Issues CloneZilla and Other Linux Distros Hang During or After Bringing up Ethernet Card I've had problems with umpteen different Linux distros trying to get them to boot from PXE where the distro hangs on trying to bring up the ethernet card (eth0). The latest failure was Clonezilla clonezilla-live-1.2.10-14-i486.iso and clonezilla-live-20110922-natty.iso. As with other distros this hangs at the following stage (only one ethernet card installed). I also tried clonezilla-live-1.2.8-42-i486.iso and got the same results.
The card appears to be "up" but IP-config hangs. I've spotted several forums where this is a known issue but no one seems to have a workaround. It is suggested that it happens if more than 1 ethernet card is fitted. In my case there's only one card (onboard) TFTPD32 shows a DHCP request error which matches this forum comment - and this one - and the Linux distro appears to be stuck in a loop making these requests to TFTPD32...
[ ] Ping before assignation [sic] is OFF TFTPD32 is assigning an address via DHCP but Linux doesn't seem to be recognising I tried the following workaround but the command-line was completely ignored and the distro was locked into a DHCP request loop with TFTPD32 kernel /vmlinuz Next I had an idea. I terminated TFTPD32 as soon as /initrd had been transferred. This resulted in the successful acquisition of an IP address from my Wireless router's DHCP so the problem is down to a combination of TFPD32's DHCP server and the Linux DHCP request script. I finally managed to get Clonezilla to boot but only by quickly clicking [x] Close in TFTPD32 really quickly after /initrd was transferred. I also had to use MicroApache rather than TFTPD32's TFTP server to transfer filesystem.squashfs. All of this is a huge ball-ache! Here's my full config entry... (the final line wraps from append... onwards)
Trying to save an image to my Win2k box via SAMBA was a whole other story of failed socket messages! Unable to Run TFTPD32 on "Cut Down" XP (BartPE, UBCD4Win, Hiren's, Mini-XP etc.) A persistent problem with all "cut down" versions of XP such as BartPE, UBCD4Win and Mini-XP is that TFTPD32 will not run - it returns a socket error. I've been searching for the fix for this for some time but it appears to be common to all of these memory-mapped versions of XP. BIOS Issues - Acer Aspire One The Acer Aspire One netbook was found to have issues when downloading a PXE ram image whereby it would spontaneously reboot during download of the ramdisk image (about 5 seconds after starting to load). The BIOS version affected was v3301. Upgrading to v3310 fixed the problem and allowed UBCD4Win to be downloaded and booted successfully on the Aspire One. v3114 is also no good Windows Server RAMDISK.SYS Patch Errors Q) An error appears A) Wrong version of Ramdisk.sys. The XP version (2002) is present but the XP Server 2003 (2005) version is needed Q) An error appears A) Cause: The ramdisk has a maximum size of about 500mb - the ISO image
is larger than this A) Cause: The ramdisk image doesn't exist or is not accessible (e.g. locked) Oracle VMBox Network Layer Clashes Q) A local virtual machine of any kind cannot connect to a locally hosted PXE server during testing A) Cause: I found that the network layer driver installed as a part of Oracle VMBox which provides additional networking/subnet clashes with most virtualisation software (PC Emulators) hosted on the same machine during testing. In my case I found it easy enough to remove this driver by going to Control Panel->System->Hardware tab->Device Manager and removing the errant driver. Issues Running BartPE or UBCD4Win via PXEboot/GRUB Q) Stop 0x7b A) Cause: XP (or earlier) O/S wasn't designed to run from a ramdisk. Any ISO should be mastered or remastered using the RAMDISK.SYS driver (stored in the image as i386\RAMDISK.SY_ ) from Windows Server 2003 or the available service pack. The solution and guides can be found here Booting Hiren's Mini-XP Boot Disk Q) Can Hiren's Boot Disk be PXE booted? A) Yes. I managed to get it booting nicely. In my case I remastered the CD and removed all of the DOS applications in \dos, the \boot\*.sqfs stuff and some of the larger applications such as Antivirus etc. from \programs and \programs\files. These get rapidly out of date anyway. I found I could boot raw XP in about 60mb and XP plus most of the apps in around 110mb The menu entry is as follows (assuming you burned the remastered compilation as "minixp.iso". I added a brief timeout as I have a couple of other items remaining on the menu such as the small memtest86 application. A persistent problem with all "cut down" versions of XP such as BartPE, UBCD4Win and Mini-XP is that TFTPD32 will not run - it returns a socket error.
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