ipxe on i210-AT, what is the best way?

[JMyrh]

I am trying to put an ipxe rom image on the option rom of an i210-at adapter, but so far with limited success:

1) building the ipxe image for i210: ok

2) burn with flashrom : not supported

3) burn with bootutil.exe : not supported

4) burn with lanconf.exe: it is possible to read out "flash" and "nvm" files (which turn out identical), an option to write flash files is present but unavailable (probably due to protection jumper?), but as far as I can tell no way to update just the option rom part

reading the i210 data sheet and looking at addresses through lanconf gives a rough idea how to merge/pad/patch up a new "flash" file containing the existing "shadow ram" and "secure area" but with my custom option rom. I have made such a file but not yet dared try to flash it to the adapter.

I can't help but thinking there must be an better/easier way

Any ideas?

Cheers

Joachim

[st4]

Hi Jomy,

Thank you for the post. I will check on this

rgd,

wb

[st4]

Hi Jomy,

Please refer to section 2.19 of below document for reference.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/faqs/ethernet-controller-i210-i211-faq.pdf http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/faqs/ethernet-controller-i210-i211-faq.pdf

With regards to the tools for BIOS developers to use to create images for inclusion in a BIOS, it is available in documents 387754 (for

PXE) and 388381 (for iSCSI boot) in Intel Business link.

I would suggest your to visit this website first to contact the Intel Business Link support.

https://kaveri.intel.com/ibl/help/support.htm https://kaveri.intel.com/ibl/help/support.htm

Hope the above helps.

rgds,

wb

[JMyrh]

hi wb

thank you for the response

I have downloaded the tool packages in documents 387754 and 388381. As far as I can tell they both contain a single tool, bootutil.exe, of the same version found in preboot.exe - which does not seem to support i210. Am I missing soemthing? does bootutil support some subset of its functionality for i210?

what about backwards engineering the images? would it be possible to use only lanconf.exe and BE tools such as https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/index.shtml IDA: About or http://binwalk.org/ Binwalk | Firmware Analysis Tool ? or are the images encrypted in some way that prevents this?

with regards

Joachim

[st4]

Hi Jomy,

Thank you for the update. Let me further check.

rgds

wb

[st4]

Hi Jomy,

Further checking, IPXE is an open source project which we do not support.However here are some suggestion you might want to try:

1) Try use LANCONF to write to the expansion ROM, however in case it does not work, we do not have sources to further support

2) Try use the i210 adapter to boot and chainload IPXE, here is a website for your reference:

http://ipxe.org/howto/chainloading http://ipxe.org/howto/chainloading

thanks

wb