[K12OSN] Still foiled by Broadcom 5751s in PXE mode

[Timothy Legge]

Trae Elmore wrote:
> The clients in my Dell Precision 370 lab still aren't booting properly. They are booting in PXE mode. They pull an address and begin to load the client kernel, however the th3 module isn't inserting properly and the result is a kernel panic.

The tg3 based NICs are crap.  I may be a little unkind but I have been 
to the source more times than I would like and and it really looks like 
a chip that was rushed to market and each new revision is desparately 
trying to correct past mistakes.

If the Dell's are relatively new then you will probably need to actually 
use the broadcom driver direct from broadcom.com.  Ordinarily that would 
be a simple kernel recompile but recent versions of LTSP require the 
build environment.

Your best bet is to try to identify which linux kernel version (if any) 
support your tg3.  Then determine whether that kernel version can be 
used with LTSP (talk to Jim M of the ltsp.org project).

If the card is only supported by the Broadcom driver you need someone 
willing to go into the source and create a patch against the current 
ltsp driver.

Your best bet might be www.vfxweb.com where a 3c905C (PXE on the card) 
is $8.82 USD.

Tim