NFS kickstart fails with e1000.ko drivers

[ccollier at viawest.net]

I have successfully used kickstart via http with this network interface 
using rhel 3.  It should work for rh 9 as well.  (I might have used 9, but 
I can't recall now.)  Depending on your pxe configuration there might not 
be much difference between this and an nfs source for the file.

verification of an interface match:
03:02.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
03:02.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)

This requires that you use the images from:

(yourdistribution)/images/pxeboot/ 

This ramdisk contains all the drivers, including the e1000, rather than 
the smaller subset in the normal boot images.

Can you pass on what images you are using, as well as what your netboot 
file looks like?  Are you specifying the ksdevice and other ks parameters 
in the append line in this file?

cody



On Fri, 7 May 2004, Joe Robertson wrote:

> I believe this is probably an anaconda problem but since it only shows
> up when I'm trying
> to do kickstart I will send it here.
>  
> Question:  
> Has anyone has been successful in running kickstart via NFS through an
> Intel 82546EB network interface?
>  
> I'm fighting a problem getting kickstart to run with these NICs (using
> NFS).  
> It appears to be related to the NIC in use.
>  
> I have setup a PXE install environment using NFS to hold a copy of the
> installation tree (created
> by copying all of the contents of all of the CDs for a given version of
> linux).  I can do interactive installs
> with RH9, Fedora Core 1, Core 2/test 1-3, as well as others.  These
> installs work without incident on
> all hardware I've tried so far.
>  
> The problem comes in when I try to use kickstart instead of doing the
> interactive installs on a machine
> that uses the Intel 82546EB Gigabit ethernet chipset.  When the
> installation gets to a point where it 
> needs to access NFS (for the kickstart file or for the installation) at
> which time it reports that NFS 
> has failed and tries to load from CD (according to the ALT-F3 screen)
> then halts.  I have tried this on 
> several Dell 1600sc and a SuperMicro 6013P-T with the same results.
>  
> I added a 3COM 3C905C-TX card to the Dell 1600sc and configured the bios
> so I could install from 
> that card via PXE.  The kickstart installation runs just fine with this
> nic - no other changes.
>  
> I've tried several suggestions - I used a 3COM 3C39036 switch (instead
> of the netgear Gb), I've 
> connected two computers directly with a crossover cable (no switch) but
> cannot get kickstart to
> run when using the Intel 82546EB Gb nic.
>  
> Any suggestions for isolating this (or solving it) would be welcomed.
>  
> Thanks,
> Joe
>  
>