Netbooting with PXE

[Strange, John]

Hey Gang,

I'm doing kickstart netboots on a lot of machines and wondered how in the
heck do you upgrade the version of PXE on the intergrated ethernet boards
that are part of the Nightshade (N440BX) Intel server board.  The problem
I'm having is the version of PXE is 0.99c on the card and only get about
halfway through the DHCP conversation before they bomb out.  I know this is
sorta slightly off topic but I've been beating myself over the head for two
days now with no luck, heck even google comes up with very few pxe booting
results with the intergrated eepro on the nightshade board! :(

Here's the log from the dhcpd server:

Jul 26 15:39:23 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:39:23 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 169.144.155.230 to
00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:39:39 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:39:39 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 169.144.155.230 to
00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:03 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:03 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 169.144.155.230 to
00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:08 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:08 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 169.144.155.230 to
00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:17 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:17 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 169.144.155.230 to
00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:33 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0
Jul 26 15:42:33 jukebox dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 169.144.155.230 to
00:90:27:f6:f8:c9 via eth0

Here's a copy of the dhcpd.conf file:

[root at jukebox /etc]# more dhcpd.conf
deny unknown-clients;
#not authoritative;

option domain-name              "eng.fore.com";
option domain-name-servers      169.144.155.13, 169.144.155.14;
option subnet-mask              255.255.255.0;
option dhcp-class-identifier    "PXEClient";

allow bootp;
allow booting;
 

#option ip-forwarding    false;  # No IP forwarding
#option mask-supplier    false;  # Don't respond to ICMP Mask req

subnet 169.144.155.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        range 169.144.155.230 169.144.155.240;
        option routers  169.144.155.1;
}

group {
        filename "pxelinux.0";
        next-server 169.144.155.57;

        host node01 {
                hardware ethernet 00:90:27:f6:f8:c9;
                fixed-address 169.144.155.230;
        }
        host node02 {
                hardware ethernet 00:90:27:f6:f5:18;
                fixed-address 169.144.155.231;
        }
}

So basically it just goes into this eternal loop and I can't seem to figure
out why, the DHCP config is the same I used for the other ones that have
.99j version of PXE on the board and it worked fine.

Any help would be appreciated as all I can find from intel is points towards
the pxe sdk, which I don't think I want to even mess with.

Thanks,

John Strange
Network Analyst
Marconi Communications
john.ws.strange at marconi.com
(724) 742-6513