Urgent / Desperate for help - Attempts to load LiveCD from PXE menu fail on some units but not others

[Locane]

Hello, I'm at a loss as to what's causing this issue on my setup.

I have a CentOS 7.3 server with cobbler and xinetd.  I have a pxe menu
entry for the vanilla centos LiveCD that looks like this:

/images/centos_livecd/centos_vmlinuz
initrd=/images/centos_livecd/centos_livecd_initrd.img ksdevice=bootif lang=
root=live:/centos_livecd.iso kssendmac text ks=
http://10.101.24.21/cblr/svc/op/ks/profile/centos_livecd BOOTIF=<MAC>

The non-working behavior is:
 - Hit enter
 - Kernel downloads
 - Initrd downloads, but silently (only 3 "."s show up, but I can tell its
downloading watching tcpdump)
 - The download finishes, the screen flashes, and the PXE menu comes back up
 - Subsequent retries result in the menu flashing and coming back up with
an "invalid kernel parameter" error

Again - I have about 15 units of varying motherboard and platform NOT
working, and about 40 or so units of varying motherboard and platform that
ARE working with the exact same menu entry and no configuration differences.

Can anyone help me?

[Andrew Simpson]

just a guess, but do you have some variants that are UEFI and others that
are not?

Andrew Simpson

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 3:53 PM, Locane  wrote:
> Hello, I'm at a loss as to what's causing this issue on my setup.
>
> I have a CentOS 7.3 server with cobbler and xinetd.  I have a pxe menu
> entry for the vanilla centos LiveCD that looks like this:
>
> /images/centos_livecd/centos_vmlinuz initrd=/images/centos_livecd/centos_livecd_initrd.img
> ksdevice=bootif lang= root=live:/centos_livecd.iso kssendmac text ks=
> http://10.101.24.21/cblr/svc/op/ks/profile/centos_livecd BOOTIF=<MAC>
>
> The non-working behavior is:
> Hit enter
> Kernel downloads
> Initrd downloads, but silently (only 3 "."s show up, but I can tell its
>
> downloading watching tcpdump)
> The download finishes, the screen flashes, and the PXE menu comes back
>
> up
> Subsequent retries result in the menu flashing and coming back up with
>
> an "invalid kernel parameter" error
>
> Again - I have about 15 units of varying motherboard and platform NOT
> working, and about 40 or so units of varying motherboard and platform that
> ARE working with the exact same menu entry and no configuration differences.
>
> Can anyone help me?
>
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[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Andrew Simpson

| just a guess, but do you have some variants that are UEFI and others that
| are not?

Or some with Secure Boot enabled (thus requiring properly signed
objects) and others without?

Bonus hint: Sometimes these options are disguised in the firmware
setup page.  I found out this week that the way to switch between
"legacy" and UEFI mode is by an option called "Windows 8/8.1 feature"
on my MSI Cubi
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=289811.0

Double decoding: "Legacy" is the term that seems to be used for the old 
fashioned BIOS system of booting (it never had a real name).  "CSM" is the 
name for the optional feature of UEFI firmware that can emulate legacy 
BIOS runtime features.