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PXE Boot to PCI card

 
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Dave73
Regular Advisor

PXE Boot to PCI card

Hello

 

A while ago i read a post here about how to change the way pxe talks to the server during boot.

 

I have no onboard nic's and pxe will not load from the pci slots.

 

Please advise on how to do this or where i can find the article.

 

Thanks

9 REPLIES 9
shocko
Honored Contributor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

Hi,

Modern servers should have no issue PXE booting from a PCI Nic. Make sure you have the latest firmware installed and also that PXE is enabled in the BIOS for that card and that network boot is enabled overall. I'm not 100% sure what your issue is. What hardware are you running and what are you trying to achieve?

If my post was helpful please award me Kudos! or Points :)
Dave73
Regular Advisor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

DL360 and 380 Gen8 servers.

 

Trying to boot to PXE via the pci nic card - 361t - to install an image via RDP.

 

When i F12 to network boot, the server only wants to pxe via the broadcom onboard 10gb nics. these cannot be used as we do not have gbics for them.

 

Their is no option during post to get into the 361t card to check if pxe boot is enabled on them.

 

I am busy loading the latest SPP.

 

Case logged with HP.

Dave73
Regular Advisor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

Solved with the latest SPP installation.

 

Possibly a firmware upgrade on the 361t to enable pxe boot.

shocko
Honored Contributor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

As suggested ;) Glad to hear you have it working,

If my post was helpful please award me Kudos! or Points :)
Dave73
Regular Advisor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

Thanks Shocko, but ive come across a new issue.

 

The nic drivers have to be injected into the winpe and linux boot images.

 

I have no idea how to do this. Is it complex to perform ?

shocko
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

No this is quite straightforward but It will be done automatically if you upgrade to the latest version of Insight Deployment as it supports the Gen 8 servers ;)

 

PS: Best to mark this thread resolved and start a new one for the driver issue and we'll help you there ;)

If my post was helpful please award me Kudos! or Points :)
anthony11
Regular Advisor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

Too bad SPP is always out of date, and unusable regardless -- the persistent bugs in the startup scripts, the way that it insists on applying OS packages when only firmware updates are required, etc.

 

cidrick
New Member

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

Just to chime in that this thread got me pointed in the right direction. I had the same issue not getting the option to PXE boot from the Intel-based PCI NIC (the HP 361T) . I fixed the issue by downloading the self-extracting update titled "HP Intel Online Firmware Upgrade Utility for Linux x86_64 v.1.3.6" on HP's support site and installing it via a CentOS 6 LiveCD. There's no need to install the full SPP just for one firmware update.

 

Once that was installed, it appeared in the boot order and PXE booting worked just fine.

anthony11
Regular Advisor

Re: PXE Boot to PCI card

So you used media redirection in iLO to mount the liveCD ISO image?  I thought those were generally read-only -- did you copy the firmware script into a ramdisk /tmp or something?