What is the status of KEA PXE booting?

[drosophila]

I've found only a few threads dedicated to this combination here (like this and this), and none of them give me high hopes, but maybe it's silently being worked on?

The situation is that after following the official documentation (as well as some inofficial guides (this and this) later on), PXE booting through KEA still only works for some clients (Realtek Boot Agent), but fails for others (NVidia PXE boot). And sadly none of the configuration parameters are self-explanatory in the GUI ("Next-server" should fill itself in automatically if TFTP boot is enabled or at least the help should mention that it's a requirement for TFTP booting), if they exist at all. Also, I was unable to get the special options from the guides to propagate to the config file, and if they did, they ended up in places different from what the inofficial guides say they should. I assumed this would be a no-brainer, as setting up Dnsmasq for PXE booting worked instantly for all clients, as did udhcpd on another machine. It's just KEA that I can't get to terms with.

So, is KEA just not ready for this, or did I simply not dig deeply enough / would have to use use the manual configuration override? I'd rather use KEA for PXE booting only, and reserve Dnsmasq for a hypothetical internal DNS service. I prefer to separate services so that I can mess up either without affecting the others. But I'd rather not mess around with half-documented hacks and an unsupported configuration in a GUI-driven environment like OPNsense. :)

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

I did have a user confirming the boot with the new options work as intended:

https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/10029

Maybe try to ping them on github and see if they can help you here.

[nero355]

PXE booting through KEA still only works for some clients (Realtek Boot Agent), but fails for others (NVidia PXE boot).

Nvidia PXE BOOT ?!

That sounds like a very old nForce4 Motherboard with their NIC and Soundcard Onboard ?!

I would simply add a nice Intel NIC to that system :)

[drosophila]

Maybe try to ping them on github and see if they can help you here.

Well, I did get the Realtek things to boot alright, just not the nVidia. However, contacting them would require me to sign up for GH, and I'd rather not have yet another account to have data stolen/sold/abused for "legitimate interest" or shady "law enforcement" demands. :)

That sounds like a very old nForce4 Motherboard with their NIC and Soundcard Onboard ?!

It's old but not that old. :) It's an MS-7380. The NIC is an ordinary RTL8211BL but oddly they still use nVidia Boot Agent (probably because it's in their firmware anyway, as the entire chip set is nVidia). Probably that was grafted on and is the reason why it doesn't work with the standard settings.

However, every MoBo since the early 2000s has had onboard sound and NIC, except industrial and server boards of course, so that by itself doesn't seem to be an indication of age?

[nero355]

contacting them would require me to sign up for GH, and I'd rather not have yet another account to have data stolen/sold/abused for "legitimate interest" or shady "law enforcement" demands. :)

Proton.me account where you offload such stuff and you are done! :)

It's old but not that old. :) It's an MS-7380.

It's horribly old : https://community.spiceworks.com/t/micro-star-international-co-ltd-ms-7380/979695

But it was/still is one of the most beautiful motherboards ever made! :)

The NIC is an ordinary RTL8211BL but oddly they still use nVidia Boot Agent (probably because it's in their firmware anyway, as the entire chip set is nVidia). Probably that was grafted on and is the reason why it doesn't work with the standard settings.

That's one of those half this/half that constructions that use to be popular in the past.

I can't remember anymore what the exact details were, but I think your PHY part is probably made by Nvidia and the MAC part is RealTek.
Something like that anyway...

However, every MoBo since the early 2000s has had onboard sound and NIC, except industrial and server boards of course, so that by itself doesn't seem to be an indication of age?

I only mentioned that to check if it's a "Luxury" model or one of the cheaper models which did not have all the Nvidia features like the special Soundcard at the time and in this case also the NIC is not 100% Nvidia :)