User reports Blancco was working before our mirror/session activity
today - then my attempted fixes (grubx64.efi rebuild, kexec-initrd
driver sweep, verbose blancco-init.sh) made it worse:
- First attempt (narrow igc driver add) did not help because the
switch-root path was not the one actually loaded by grubx64.efi's
embedded config.
- Second attempt (swapped grub embedded config to Ubuntu-kernel path)
got further, but then kexec-initrd modules failed on insmod.
- Third attempt (full ethernet tree sweep) pulled in broken ancient
drivers (winbond-840, w5100-spi, xirc2ps_cs) that failed with
unknown-symbol errors and prevented good drivers from loading.
Full revert: .gitignore, blancco-init.sh, pxe_server_setup.yml back to
the pre-session commit 6dcf832 state. Removes boot-tools/blancco/grub-
blancco.cfg from git (it was only added this session).
Runtime on both PXE servers was also restored: grubx64.efi and
kexec-initrd.img reverted from the .bak files taken before each
modification this session.
Whatever was there before today is now restored byte-for-byte on both
servers. If there is still a Blancco boot issue on specific modern
hardware that the user needs to fix, we will diagnose that narrowly
against the actual failure mode on that specific machine, not by
making sweeping preemptive changes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Previous approach listed ~6 specific drivers (e1000e, igb, tg3, bnx2,
bnxt_en, b44) and silenced insmod errors (2>/dev/null). On modern Dell
fleet (Latitude 5330/5440, Pro-series, newer OptiPlex) this missed
igc (Intel I225/I226) entirely, and for the drivers we did include,
dependency modules they need at insmod time (libeth, libie, dca,
i2c-algo-bit, macsec, mii, libphy, ptp, ...) were never bundled.
insmod does not resolve dependencies, so NIC drivers that need
helpers failed to load silently.
playbook/pxe_server_setup.yml (kexec-initrd build):
- Sweep the whole drivers/net/ethernet tree (~170 drivers, all
vendors, ~15 MB total). Drivers for hardware not present skip
without binding.
- Add common helper dirs: drivers/net/{phy,mdio}, drivers/i2c/algos,
drivers/dca, drivers/ptp, net/macsec, drivers/ssb.
- overlay.ko kept.
playbook/blancco-init.sh:
- Load helpers BEFORE main NIC drivers (libeth/libie, dca,
i2c-algo-bit, macsec, mii, ssb, libphy, mdio*, phy*, ptp*),
then iterate remaining modules.
- Remove 2>/dev/null on insmod so actual failures surface on the
boot console.
- Print kernel version + /sys/class/net before/after driver load,
plus dmesg grep for NIC driver activity.
- On "no interface found" failure, dump dmesg tail and drop to a
busybox shell for manual debug rather than just hanging.
Separate from this commit but related: kexec-initrd.img on both PXE
servers (.1 and .2) was rebuilt inline with these changes. Pre-rebuild
binary kept as kexec-initrd.img.bak-<timestamp>.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Switch to Blancco native kernel (vmlinuz-bde-linux) for hardware compat
- Config.img preferences with BMC connection (classic.eu-west-1.blancco.cloud)
- Disable wired LAN in preferences so WiFi takes default route to BMC
- WiFi SSID INTERNETACCESS configured in plaintext in config.img
- Slim GRUB EFI (1.3MB standalone with minimal modules)
- Fix Windows line endings in blancco-init.sh
- Add extra NIC drivers to switch_root initramfs
- SSH enabled in modified airootfs.sfs (root:blancco)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
