Within the last week we encountered a problem with our opsi-linux-bootimage in combination with new Dell devices. This problem results in a black screen and a seemingly dead machine whenever a Windows or 32bit Linux netboot installations runs. Furthermore an analysis is hard as the machine runs in a black screen of death (BSOD) before even properly starting the opsi-linux-bootimage kernel itself. However we have a workaround for this issue: use the 64Bit bootimage.

By default setting a windows netboot product on setup, triggers the opsipxeconfd, which uses a template to generate a specific PXE pipe. This file is within the opsi tftpboot directory. This directory is /tftpboot/linux on most opsi supported distributions (or /var/lib/tftpboot/opsi on SUSE based distributions). Within this tftpboot directory the PXE templates are found within the pxelinux.cfg directory. The specific template is the file install. This file has to be modified to use the 64bit kernel and miniroot of the opsi-linux-bootimage. The template should look like this after the modification:

default opsi-install

label opsi-install
  kernel install-x64
  append initrd=miniroot-x64.bz2 video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr vga=791 quiet splash --no-log console=tty1 console=ttyS0

The downside of this modification is that after an update one has to modify the template again. We are currently working on a permanent solution.