Pis refuse to boot

[rprr]

I'm able to set up the Pis but they refuse to boot. I looked at the logs on the server /var/log/syslog and they seem to get stuck right after the line which has something like vendor encap. The server definitely sees the pis but tftpboot fails. Can I turn on more debugging?

[maxnet]

Since you opened other issues before, I am assuming you did had success before. Was that with same Pis/network?

[rprr]

It was working before. I moved it to a different location which required some network changes. I must have messed something up. I have attempted to go back from scratch many times but just can’t get it to work. I will report back to see if I can fix it.

Thanks for your reply.

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 1:27 PM maxnet notifications@github.com wrote:

Since you opened other issues before, I am assuming you did had success before. Was that with same Pis/network?

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/raspberrypi/piserver/issues/23#issuecomment-382560600, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOI1nh39JqNWu4ZukHvO97T6EZ4RGZrCks5tp8vxgaJpZM4Ta61G .

[rprr]

A little more progress. I'm able to boot, but only occasionally. Almost all of the time, the server does see the remote pi when it is powered up and recognizes it by Mac address. dnsmasq-dhcp sends commands to it but somehow dnsmasq-tftp does not start to send over the bootcode.bin and other files. It is really puzzling. The command just immediately before has some line with "vendor encap" etc. Maybe there is some sort of timing issue.

To add some more information on the setup: Raspbian Stretch Desktop is running in a VM inside a Redhat Machine. Installation was followed by apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade. 'piserver' was built from source following the instructions on the git readme.

[rprr]

It appears this may be connected to an arp filtering issue. Putting an sd card with just bootcode.bin netboots ok.

[rprr]

Just to follow up. I tried to test this issue with piserver directly on an x86 computer that had Raspbian Desktop freshly installed (no VM). The issue of the pis not being able to netboot consistently without the SD card persisted. It always seems to reliably boot as long as there is a FAT32 formatted micro SD card with bootcode.bin. I have not been able to determine the actual reason why the netboot without the SD card is unsuccessful.

[maxnet]

Probably Ethernet switch specific.

[rprr]

@maxnet -- Thanks. Closing this.