client hangs after eth0 becomes ready

[Sylvain Milot]

Hello List,

comments below concerning multiple NICs ...

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011, W Forum W wrote:

> Hi
>
> On Tuesday 15 November 2011 11:50:04 W Forum W wrote:
>> Please any help oder ideas
>
> Actually that is exactly my second problem (cf yesterday's email).
>
>> >> Does you server has multiples interfaces? If so use the kernel
>> >> arguments: live-netdev=eth0
>
>
> This one does not always help, as device number is not stable. On the server 
> I
> currently face the problems with many disks I face the same as it has 4 NICs
> connected to it.
>
> Sometimes it seems that appending
>
> IPAPPEND 3
>
> the the pxelinux.cfg file helps, sometimes it does not.
>
> Using live-netdev=ethX to force it seems to work mostly, but as said it's not
> stable. Ideally, the scripts in the initrd should try to re-use the interface
> it got the initial kernel and initrd from as I guess this will be the case 
> for
> close to 100% of the cases. IPAPPEND 3 should do that trick if I understand 
> it
> correctly (there were a few threads on this list months(years?) ago on that.
>
> However, it does not always work :(
>
> So far, I have yet to find a solution for it as well
>
> Carsten
>
> Hi,
>
> I tries all these options non of them worked
> I still have to try several times (7-15 times) to get the client installed
>
>
> This is the modifiedpxelinux.cfg file
>
> # generated by fai-chboot for host greenland10 with IP 192.168.52.10
> default fai-generated
>
> label fai-generated
> kernel vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686
> append initrd=initrd.img-2.6.32-5-686 ip=dhcp live-netdev=eth0 root=/dev/nfs 
> nfsroot=/srv/fai/nfsroot boot=live  FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt 
> FAI_ACTION=install
> IPAPPEND 3
> #####
>
> I tried different combination wtih live-netdev and IPAPPEND without success
>
>
> After 'eth0: link becomes ready' the client hangs
>
> When I restart the client a few times sometimes I am lucky and the client 
> boot and installs successfully
>
> Is their no solution for this. It is demotivating to install a lot of clients
>
> Many thanks
> Regards
>
>

I've had some issues with multiple NICs and dhcp as well and I've now resorted to
fixing a few parameters and avoiding the dchp client call ... I've had good success
since.

I think the dhcp client still makes the call though but fixing these parameters
helps.

here's an example:

# generated by fai-chboot for host james with IP 172.16.178.144
default fai-generated

label fai-generated
kernel vmlinuz-2.6.38-grml64
append initrd=initrd.img-2.6.38-grml64 ethdevice=eth0 ip=172.16.178.144:172.16.178.229:172.16.178.1:255.255.255.0:james:eth0:none root=/dev/nfs boot=live nfsroot=/export/home/fai/squeeze/nfsroot-amd64 FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt FAI_ACTION=install

You will find the description of those parameters in the kernel source tree ...
in Documentation/filesystems/nfs/nfsroot.txt

HTH,

Best,

Sylvain