Looking for an ASUS motherboard that net boots...

Teddy teddy-5sHjOODPK7E at public.gmane.org
Fri Aug 15 14:15:10 UTC 2008


Would it not be easier to just disable the onboard NIC, and drop in a 
network card that does PXE?


Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 09:10:03PM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
>   
>> I've previously noted on this mailing list the problems I have had
>> attempting to get an ASUS M2N-MX SE Plus motherboard to net boot
>> (bottom line, I have shipped the motherboard to ASUS twice, they have
>> shipped the motherboard back twice and I still have a motherboard with
>> a broadcast MAC address, grumble)...
>>     
>
> So what exactly is the MAC addres that the board is sending when trying
> to network boot right now?
>
> What MAC address does it have once in Linux if you boot a live cd or
> such?
>
> If it sends a correct MAC address to get its IP and start booting but is
> only wrong once you hit linux, then you simply need a newer kernel, or
> to file a bug report because this is a known issue with the reverse
> engineered forcedeth driver and not actually a problem with the board.
> If the board is able to send a request to start booting from the network
> and load the kernel and start executing the kernel, then there is
> NOTHING wrong with your board, only with your kernel/network driver and
> there is nothing Asus can do to fix it for you.
>
>   
>> In talking to ASUS this afternoon, they suggested they MIGHT be
>> willing to replace the M2N-MX SE Plus with a different model
>> motherboard. So, before I talk to ASUS tomorrow (Friday August 15th) I
>> would like to know what motherboards does ASUS sell that can net boot?
>>
>> With the M2N-MX SE Plus I was after a basic microATX motherboard that
>> could be tucked into a corner of my bedroom all to act as a diskless
>> frontend for my main FE/BE box in the livingroom. So, what I am after
>> is a board that:
>>
>> - MUST have a valid MAC address for the on-board ethernet port.
>> - MUST support net booting.
>>
>> As I am in no mood to re-purchase stuff to go with the motherboard I also want:
>> - a microATX form factor so I can re-use the HTPC case I have.
>> - support for the AMD AM2 3200+ CPU
>> - support for   533MHz DDR2 memory
>> - on-board video good enough to display 1080p OR have a PCI-Expess
>> connector that will allow me to re-use my GeForce 7200 card.
>>
>> Nice to have, but not critical, as I might repurpose the motherboard
>> 2-3 years down the road would be:
>> - SATA raid support, Gigabit ethernet, firewire, etc...
>>
>> So, what ASUS motherboards (if any) can make the above cut?
>>     
>
> Well unfortunately for an AMD CPU you only seem to have the choices of
> ATI and Nvidia for chipset.  I despise ATI chipsets, but unfortunately
> it seems you are being hit by the backwards MAC address problem on the
> Nvidia board, although I am surprised that could have hit the network
> boot code.  For an intel CPU you would have a few more choices.
>
>   

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