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External NIC Failing Boot
2018/09/05 17:25
Notice: This wiki is for the old version CCBoot. Please click HERE to access the new version wiki
CCBoot does support booting from external NIC (addon NIC)
There are many addon NIC available on the market. Some are PCI, PCIe x1. etc
But most of them fail to boot when used in diskless environment.
Firstly, to support PXE boot (Diskless boot) all Addon NIC need to have Boot Rom chip installed in the socket.
Below see Addon nic with and without Boot Rom chip installed.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 1 and Figure 2 are Addon NICs that dont have boot rom chip in them, hence these NIC are not able to boot from Network even if they are Gigabit NIC.
Note: Avoid buying NIC without boot rom chip if you are looking to use it for diskless boot
Figure 3
Figure 3 has boot rom chip installed in it hence this addon NIC is able to boot from LAN (i.e. diskless boot)
To use addon NIC as primary NIC for diskless booting, please disable onboard NIC in the BIOS.
Note: If the External LAN has boot rom chip and still the client fails to boot,
then you need to disable the build in LAN for the motherboard from the BIOS.
Note: Also, if the client boots but gets stuck at ccboot.com screen after reading about 400KB data,
then change the pxe option for the client to "gpxex.pxe" or 'gpxe0.pxe".
Note: If you are able to boot from the external NIC, but get stuck at Windows logo screen, then it means the driver for the external NIC is not present in the image.
To solve this, you need to add the driver for the external NIC to the image, following one of two methods below.
1. Add driver using inf file - http://www.ccboot.com/add-drivers-from-server.htm
2. Collect NIC pnp from client PC with OS installed in HDD - http://www.ccboot.com/wiki-add-new-machine.htm
Related:
Using super image to boot clients
Create Client Image with Dual NICs