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>
