iPXE booting latest PCengines alu board

[Daniel Braniss]

On Jun 12, 2014, at 6:26 PM, Mike Tancsa <mike at sentex.net> wrote:

> On 6/12/2014 10:38 AM, Daniel Braniss wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> while I try to learn about iPXE, I am wondering if someone already
>> managed to boot FreeBSD via the network, else it’s going to be an
>> interesting weekend :-)
> 
> If you mean http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm, just make sure you are booting a relatively recent FreeBSD version (newer than April I think). Otherwise, it boots just fine like any other bit of hardware over the network.


no, it does not :-(, the bios has iPXE not PXE - notice the little i)
after hitting ^B i managed some progress:

iPXE> kernel tftp://132.65.116.7/tftpboot/freebsd/pxeboot-9.3
tftp://132.65.116.7/tftpboot/freebsd/pxeboot-9.3... ok
iPXE> boot
PXE Loader 1.00

Building the boot loader arguments
Relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader
pxe_open: server addr: 132.65.60.52
pxe_open: server path: /vol/binary/bsd/amd64/7.0
pxe_open: gateway ip:  132.65.80.1
Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf 
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x798197 data=0xf5fe8+0x7c998 syms=[0x8+0xb2a10+0x8+0x98f34]
/boot/kernel/zfs.ko size 0xf5a28 at 0xc57000
/boot/kernel/ispfw.ko size 0xbe288 at 0xd4d000
/

 ???????????????????????????????????????????
 ?                                         ?
 ?                                         ?               ,        ,
 ?                                         ?              /(        )`
 ?          Welcome to FreeBSD!            ?              \ \___   / |
 ?                                         ?              /- _  `-/  '
 ?                                         ?             (/\/ \ \   /\
 ?  1. Boot FreeBSD [default]              ?             / /   | `    \
 ?  2. Boot FreeBSD with ACPI enabled      ?             O O   ) /    |
 ?  3. Boot FreeBSD in Safe Mode           ?             `-^--'`<     '
 ?  4. Boot FreeBSD in single user mode    ?            (_.)  _  )   /
 ?  5. Boot FreeBSD with verbose logging   ?             `.___/`    /       
 ?  6. Escape to loader prompt             ?               `-----' /
 ?  7. Reboot                              ?  <----.     __ / __   \
 ?                                         ?  <----|====O)))==) \) /====|
 ?                                         ?  <----'    `--' `.__,' \
 ?                                         ?               |        |
 ?                                         ?                \       /       /\
 ?  Select option, [Enter] for default     ?           ______( (_  / \______/
 ?  or [Space] to pause timer  8           ?         ,'  ,-----'   |
 ???????????????????????????????????????????         `--{__________) 


GDB: no debug ports present
KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
Copyright (c) 1992-2008 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 7.0-RC1 #41: Sun Dec 30 15:19:13 IST 2007
    danny at sunfire:/r+d/obj/sunfire/r+d/7.0/src/sys/HUJI
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: AMD G-T40E Processor (1000.00-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "AuthenticAMD"  Id = 0x500f20  Stepping = 0
  Features=0x178bfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HTT>
  Features2=0x802209<SSE3,MON,SSSE3,CX16,<b23>>
  AMD Features=0x2e500800<SYSCALL,NX,MMX+,FFXSR,<b26>,RDTSCP,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x35ff<LAHF,CMP,SVM,ExtAPIC,CR8,<b5>,<b6>,<b7>,Prefetch,<b10>,<b12>,<b13>>
  Cores per package: 2
usable memory = 4246466560 (4049 MB)
avail memory  = 4093575168 (3903 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <CORE   COREBOOT>
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs
…
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd: unable to get the current command byte value.
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
atkbd0: [ITHREAD]
psm0: unable to get the current command byte value.
ppc0: cannot reserve I/O port range

and here it hung.
ok, so this is a very old kernel, which got selected by default,
(just shows how old the default is :-), but when I set it to boot
9.3-BETA2 via the latest pxeboot it hangs just after initialising
the BTX.

I have since managed to boot it via a local disk, the same kernel BTW,
so at least that is ok.


thanks,
	danny
PS: I left the original ip’s - hopefully the firewall is working ok :-)