[mythtv-users] OT: netboot is extremely slow to boot

Justin Johnson justin.johnson3 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 19 01:51:45 UTC 2010


On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Tyler T <tylernt at gmail.com> wrote:
>> it takes over 5
>> minutes to download the image. On the client I see:
>> DHCP..
>> <ip info>
>> TFTP.
>> MTFTP......
>>
>> It's the MTFTP part that takes forever.
>
> You don't want MTFTP. Something must be misconfigured on your PXE
> client, TFTP server, DHCP server, or possibly in your bootloader to
> make it fall back to MTFTP. I used to use PXE and my kernel would TFTP
> down in just a few seconds. Are there any PXE options in your
> BIOS/Option ROM BIOS you can play with, try different settings? (Intel
> bootroms in particular have some weird options.) Can you post your
> tftpd conf file, dhcpd.conf, pxelinux.cfg/default file?

I'm using dnsmasq for dns/dhcp/tftp, though I also tried with
tftpd-hpa as suggested by the wiki guide with the same results. The
relevant lines from dnsmasq are:

dhcp-range=192.168.1.101,192.168.1.150,255.255.255.0,24h
dhcp-host=00:e0:61:0a:49:90,banana,192.168.1.51
dhcp-authoritative
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386
dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0

pxelinux.cfg/default:
default ltsp


label ltsp
kernel vmlinuz
append ro initrd=initrd.img quiet splash nbdport=2000


I see this in my syslog:
Sep 18 21:31:44 apple dnsmasq-tftp[21374]: sent
/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0 to 192.168.1.51
Sep 18 21:31:44 apple dnsmasq-tftp[21374]: error 0 TFTP Aborted
received from 192.168.1.51
Sep 18 21:31:44 apple dnsmasq-tftp[21374]: failed sending
/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0 to 192.168.1.51

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the PXE rom but I can't
find any configuration options in the BIOS setup. I saw this post
(http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/pipermail/dnsmasq-discuss/2007q1/001184.html)
but he claims it's a harmless error, but it certainly is not harmless,
it takes a full 10 minutes to transfer. I've tried disabling my
firewall (firestarter) and flushing iptables, both to no avail.

tcpdump has this to say:
21:44:08.866387 IP apple.home.ntp > 192.168.1.255.ntp: NTPv4,
Broadcast, length 48
21:44:09.274493 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps:
BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 00:e0:61:0a:49:90 (oui Unknown), length 548
21:44:09.275055 IP apple.home.bootps > 255.255.255.255.bootpc:
BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 389
21:44:13.282844 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps:
BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 00:e0:61:0a:49:90 (oui Unknown), length 548
21:44:13.347556 IP apple.home.bootps > 255.255.255.255.bootpc:
BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 389
21:44:13.353948 ARP, Request who-has apple.home tell banana.home, length 46
21:44:13.353963 ARP, Reply apple.home is-at 00:0f:20:da:74:2c (oui
Unknown), length 28
21:44:13.354565 IP banana.home.2070 > apple.home.tftp:  27 RRQ
"pxelinux.0" octet tsize 0
21:44:13.354756 IP apple.home.45546 > banana.home.2070: UDP, length 14
21:44:13.355152 IP banana.home.2070 > apple.home.45546: UDP, length 17
21:44:14.380699 IP banana.home > 0.0.0.2: igmp v1 report 0.0.0.2
21:44:18.280033 IP banana.home > 0.0.0.2: igmp v1 report 0.0.0.2
21:44:18.353860 ARP, Request who-has banana.home tell apple.home, length 28
21:44:18.354253 ARP, Reply banana.home is-at 00:e0:61:0a:49:90 (oui
Unknown), length 46
21:44:49.364738 IP banana.home.0 > apple.home.0: UDP, length 19
21:44:49.364813 IP apple.home > banana.home: ICMP apple.home udp port
0 unreachable, length 55


apple is my host server
banana is the remote client
--Justin Johnson


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