Ethernet and EFI

Could be your firmware update didn't go as planned, seems stupid to cut out Ethernet as it's much more reliable and faster than wifi. The screen you see is likely a default, to get people to connect first before restoring Lion.

See this support article to restore EFI.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1237

What happens if you start with Command-R, to boot to the Recovery Volume, and use Set Startup Disk ?

Can you set it to "Network Disk", which should be your BootP Server?

You are definitely not the only one experiencing this problem, thesame happened on our MacBook Pro "Early 2011" models - until today theycould boot from NetBoot just fine and after installing the EFI updatewe just get the big blinking globe and MacBook boots from hard disk.

I have two same models in front of me (MacBook Pro13'' i5 processor), one with the EFI update and one still without it(but all the other updates are installed, EFI update is the last oneshowing in the Software updates). They have the same OS (10.7.2), setthe same NetBoot startup disk, they are plugged into the same switch,etc. The not-updated one netboots without problem, the updated onefails and boots from hard disk.

Another interesting aspect is that when holdingOption (ALT) key at the beginning of the boot process the updatedMacBook shows hard disk images and "Choose Network..." drop down menuwhich only offers nearby wifi. (The not-updated one doesn't show thatmenu.)

Also I asked our IT guy for help determining possibleproblems with DHCP, we put PC with Wireshark between the MacBook andthe rest of the network and it seems that MacBook doesn't even try tocommunicate. The first captured packets with this MacBook's Mac addresswere shown after it booted into the system on hard disk (which it didafter the netboot failed).

Currently we are looking for some way to "downgrade" EFI ... If anyone has some experiences with that, please let us know.

Thanks,

Iva

Adding another "me too" to this - received two new MBPs with Lion preinstalled, used DeployStudio to install our standard Snow Leopard image and in the process install any remaining Apple updates, one of which was the EFI 2.2 updater.

Due to a misconfiguration I had to redo the imaging process but now the MBP is unable to find my 10.5.8 Netboot server, it just shows the internal HD and the Airport network selector. Tried all the various methods to get Netboot going; hold down N (short spinning globe, then boots from HD), go into boot selector with option, unplug/replug ethernet a few times (no Netboot volumes found) and select Netboot volume with Startup Disk while booted from internal HD (sees the Netboot volume but after short globe animation boots from internal HD again).

Incidentally, I am also unable to connect to our wireless network which takes a WPA/WPA2 password; the prompt shakes off the password. Not sure if they're related but I'm going to have to go back to an external boot drive with these MBPs until furhter notice.

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,852.0.html

Count us as "me too"s. We have seven new "Early 2011 MacBook Pros" that I spent today netbooting to reimage with DeployStudio. Six worked fine, but one whose firmware had been patched up absolutely refused to netboot.

A piece of troubleshooting data for Apple engineers if you are reading this:

The ethernet does seem to work briefly. One packet of data reaches the netboot server; I can see the IP and MAC address of the MBP in the /var/logs/system.log on the server. But the [LIST] packet sent from the server back to the MBP is never replied to. If we shut down the MBP and try again, one more entry appears in system.log followed by silence. I surmise the ethernet gets shut down or ignored by the EFI at some point subsequent to the initial transmission.

Hope this helps,

-Kurt

Add me in.

Originally this was with the MacBook Air and Mac Mini that was introduced along with Lion. Now MacBook Pro's that have the "internet recovery" firmware installed no longer netboot either

I posted about this in the Mac Mini forum https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3433338?tstart=60 and also open up a bugtrack to see if Apple can address the issue.

As far as I can tell the Mac doesn't tell the DHCP server what it is via option 60 vendor class identifier whereas previous macs did. I don't know what it is about internet recovery that would cause Apple to change this behaviour but it's causing all sorts of headaches.

Figured out what the issue was. Since the EFI 2.2 update was the first one to support Internet Recovery, changes were made to the Netboot capability to support Apple's Internet-based services. This also seems to have introduced a bug (or removed code, same net result) that prevented any of these EFI 2.2-upgraded MBPs to Netboot from a conventional Netboot server. Apple soon after released another EFI update for these models, EFI 2.3 which appears to have fixed the problem. As soon as I upgraded the problematic EFI 2.2-level MBPs to 2.3 they were once again able to discover my Netboot images and boot from them. Big relief, as I was afraid that support for Internet Recovery was going to permanently disqualify my existing 10.5 Netboot server.

TLDR; Upgrade to EFI 2.3, be happy.

Thanks,

Pepijn.

I'm having a similar issue with the late 2011 MacBook Pros and Mac Minis. We have a segmented network and therefore I use bless NetBoot machines. I have a 10.7.2 server that will boot previous machines without issue but the newer machines show the NetBoot globe then immediately default to the local drive. I've tried specifying the network interface in the bsdp address but that doesn't seem to help either. The 2.3 update also doesn't fix the problem.

There aren't many clues on the server. Below are the Netboot log entries for a successful boot from an older machine and the failed boot of a new one:

Successful boot

Nov 8 15:12:56 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: BSDP INFORM [en0] 1,0:25:4b:d6:66:c8 NetBoot001 arch=i386 sysid=MacBookPro5,5

Nov 8 15:12:56 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: NetBoot: [1,0:25:4b:d6:66:c8] BSDP ACK[LIST] sent 10.69.8.212 pktsize 311

Nov 8 15:12:57 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: BSDP INFORM [en0] 1,0:25:4b:d6:66:c8 NetBoot001 arch=i386 sysid=MacBookPro5,5

Nov 8 15:12:57 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: NetBoot: [1,0:25:4b:d6:66:c8] BSDP ACK[LIST] sent 10.69.8.212 pktsize 311

Nov 8 15:13:03 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: BSDP INFORM [en0] 1,0:25:4b:d6:66:c8 NetBoot001 arch=i386 sysid=MacBookPro5,5

Nov 8 15:13:03 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: NetBoot: [1,0:25:4b:d6:66:c8] BSDP ACK[SELECT] sent 10.69.8.212 pktsize 393

Unsuccessful boot

Nov 8 15:16:10 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: BSDP INFORM [en0] 1,3c:7:54:2f:b1:44 arch=i386 sysid=MacBookPro8,2

Nov 8 15:16:10 snkxod03 bootpd[59350]: NetBoot: [1,3c:7:54:2f:b1:44] BSDP ACK[LIST] sent 10.69.8.222 pktsize 311

The verbose bless command from both clients is identical so no clues there. This is highly problematic to our workflow so hoπefully it's fixed soon.

Update: The machines will boot fine when they're on the same subnet from both a 10.6 NetBoot server and a 10.7 server. It seems that it's just blessing a NetBoot volume on a different subnet. Annoying.