What causes PXE boot to stall?
This problem has occurred for me multiple (and atseemingly random) times across multiple hardware configurations.
I'm trying to load the KBE to do a system image deployment, but the loading process gets hung up somewhere along the way. I get to the K2000 systems deployment menu and choose my boot environment. The boot environment starts to load with the "..............." scrolling across the screen. It will go through a few lines (or a lot of lines - like I said, random), then stop. If I leave it long enough the whole thing will fail and say "Boot failed: press a key to retry, or wait for reset..."
What's going on? Or, rather, how would a human being go about determining what is going on? There isn't really any way to determine, as far as I know. It is happening so much that I really can't depend on the K2000 for installs at this point.
Answers (1)
If it happens on different models, you might have a network traffic issue. Dumb switches and hubs seem to have a hard time loading KBEs for us. If it's all the same model, update the BIOS.
Comments:
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Thanks, I've noticed using an 8-port home/desktop style switch (even a gigabit switch) can handle about one machine booted at a time. Now I'm using a 16-port Netgear Prosafe 10/100 switch that was until a few weeks ago being used in production for part of our building. I would think it should be able to handle the load better, but I still have to attempt to boot 3 or 4 times to get it to work. Any thoughts? Still not a satisfactory switch? - Ultimation 11 years ago
