PXE-E55: proxyDHCP service did not reply to request on port 4011

Products

Deployment Solution Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

The PXE client receives the error "PXE-E55: proxyDHCP service did not reply to request on port 4011."

Cause

For all versions of Deployment Solution (6.x and 7.x), this issue could show up as follows:

1. When looking at TCPVIEW (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx ), the services are binding to the correct ports. These ports are 67, 69, 4011.

2. When a wireshark (http://www.wireshark.org/download.html) trace is run, the user will see that the client is repeating it’s attempts to communicate with the PXE/NBS server because Option 60 is set up in the DHCP Scope Options Having Option 60 enabled will cause the client to attempt to communicate with the DHCP server as it’s PXE/NBS server and ignore the server that is actually hosting PXE/NBS

For 6.x only:

1. In Deployment Solution 6.9 and later, this error can occur in initial deployment if the option in PXE configuration under the DS tab is selected to only PXE boot computers that have Deployment jobs assigned to them.

2. Looking in the pxemanager.ini file in the proxy DHCP section as seen below.

[PXEServer\Shared\ProxyDHCP]
Discovery_BCast_Disabled=True
Discovery_Local_Bstrap=True
Discovery_Local_Image="BStrap"
Discovery_MCast_Addr="224.0.1.2"
Discovery_MCast_Disabled=True
Discovery_Server_List_Only=False
ServerName=""
DomainName=""
IsDomain=False
Parsers="PXEParser"
PROC_ARCH="0,X86PC","2,IA64","32,X64"
StartBootService=True
StartProxy=True
AllowIPFragmentation=True

The two highlighted lines above are the key to this issue. The above section is what a good, uncorrupted section should look like.

The PXE server will send out the PXE menu even if one of those lines are set to =False. If both of them are set to =False, the PXE server will not sent out the PXE boot menu.

If both of those lines are set to =False, then some corruption has entered the pxemanager.ini file.

Resolution

For all versions of Deployment Solution (6.x and 7.x)

The most common issue that causes this is DHCP Scope Options being configured when they don’t need to be. Most common among these is Option 60. If DHCP and PXE/NBS are hosted from separate servers, then Option 60 (as well as options 43, 66, and 67) should not be enabled.

(For 6.x only)

A very simple first thing to check if you are ONLY having the error in Deployment Solution 6.9 and later AND are only seeing the problem in Initial Deployment: Go into the PXE configuration Utility and under the DS tab, check to see if the option to only process computers with Deployment jobs is checked. If it is, uncheck it and this should resolve the issue.

If that is not the problem, the best way to diagnose the exact root cause (and then get to a direct resolution) of this error message is to run a network trace (using a network trace tool such as WireShark) from the PXE server and filter the trace to look for all of the "bootp" packets.

The following are resolutions to the above mentioned causes:

If the PXE server is responding with corrupt packets, most likely you will need to do a full complete reinstall of PXE. Article 3724, " How do I reinstall PXE Manager and PXE server cleanly from a DS 6.5, DS 6.8 and DS 6.9 environment??" explains how to do this. If this error persists after reinstalling, you might need to update to the latest release of Deployment Solution as well.
If the problem is being caused by a network error, there really isn't anything that can be done with the Deployment Server configuration or installation to fix the error. The core issue has to be resolved in the configuration of your network devices. To determine if this really is the case, however, check to make sure that that same "bootp" packets that are leaving the client are getting to the PXE server, and vice versa. This would have to be verified in network traces.
Rename the pxe.ini to pxe.ini.old and restart the PXE Config Helper service. If the PXE Server and PXE MTFTP Server services start, check your PXE.ini file for the correct IP of the server.

To fix the corrupted pxemanager.ini file, the following needs to be done on the server that has the PXE manager installed on it.

1. Open the services panel.

2. Stop the PXE manager service.

3. Go to the eXpress share.

4. Go to the PXE folder.

5. Open the pxemanager.ini file.

6. Find the following section > [PXEServer\Shared\ProxyDHCP].

7. Highlight that section and delete it.

8. Highlight and copy all of the above [PXEServer\Shared\ProxyDHCP] section in the Cause section to the pxemanager.ini file.

9. Save the file.

10.Go back to the services panel

11.Start the pxe manager service.

12.This will then download a new pxe.ini.tmp file to the PXE servers.

13.PXE will now work and download the PXE boot menu and work as expected.

Applies To

Deployment Solution, all versions