Bug 274976

Description Cheng Cui 2023-11-08 22:34:15 UTC

The FreeBSD handbook (Chapter 34.10. Diskless Operation with PXE) on installing FreeBSD via PXE is a good and efficient resource. For my work on the iwlwifi project, I need to install FreeBSD 13.2 via PXE on some of the Beelink SER5 AMD Mini PCs, which have a Realtek PCIe GB Ethernet port and can do UEFI PXE boot in default. Here are some problems that I encountered during the installation and the solutions that I found. I wish the handbook (Chapter 34.10. Diskless Operation with PXE) can be updated to reflect the solution.

problems shown in /var/log/xferlog
* tftpd: Got ERROR packet: User aborted the transfer: I think the default boot/pxeboot file from the base system is used for the legacy PXE, not used for UEFI PXE. So my mini PC can’t be PXE booted by this file. The solution is to replace the boot/pxeboot file with the boot/loader.efi file. Like this:

# chroot ${NFSROOTDIR}
# mv boot/pxeboot boot/pxeboot.orig
# cp boot/loader.efi boot/pxeboot

* tftpd: Got ERROR packet: User provided memory block is too small: I think the default tftp blocksize 512 is too small, change the tftp setup in /etc/inetd.conf to use a larger block size:

tftp    dgram   udp     wait    root    /usr/libexec/tftpd      tftpd blocksize 1468 -l -s /b/tftpboot