Disable Intel boot agent boot messages - Quad port NIC

Cannondale

New to pfSense and have successfully installed it on a server motherboard. I also have an Intel Quad port NIC installed.
During system POST, the Quad port NIC generates the following messages four times:
Initializing Intel boot agent GE v1.4.10

Unfortunately, these message only delay the boot into pfSense.
Is there a way to disable Intel boot agent messages?

mvikman

Might be possible to disable from directly from motherboard BIOS (Option ROM messages or something like that) or with Intel Firmware Utility.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005626/ethernet-products.html

Cannondale

Thanks for the information mvikman! Very helpful.
If I can successfully disable these messages, I'll post back.

Cannondale

Just wanted to close the loop on this post.
After some testing with Intel's bootutil, the only option to affect the messages is with the option -TLD, which disables initial title message. Sadly, it only hides the messages from being displayed but the 2 second delay for each of the four messages still exists.
In short, this option is worthless. The additional change that can be made is through the Intel boot agent (CTRL+S) setup, where you can change the message delay seconds.

A few other bootutil options were documented that may have achieved the original goal of preventing the Intel Boot Agent from initializing. However, they have been removed from the tool. The link:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005626/ethernet-products.html

is inaccurate in this regard.

Hope this helps others that may stumble upon this post in the future.

mvikman

Trying to remember what options on bootutil.exe I used on my NICs and if it was via BIOS or bootutil.exe that got rid of the post messages...
I'm pretty sure I ran it with the following switches, but don't remember which were successful
-WOLDISABLE, -FLASHDISABLE and -BOOTENABLE=DISABLED

Cannondale

Thanks for the additional information mvikman. I did see the -BOOTENABLE=DISABLED option in the documentation but didn't test it as it mentioned it was "for legacy BIOS". Not sure it would have any affect on UEFI.

stephenw10

You can probably disable PCIe ROMs in the BIOS to prevent it trying to boot PXE like that.

Cannondale

Thanks for your suggestion stephen. I have gone through the BIOS setting and BIOS documentation and have only found a setting for Onboard LAN Option ROM. Nothing for PCIe NIC cards.
It appears that Intel offered a bootutil option to disable the initialization of this card but that option is no longer available.

stephenw10

Might be able to do it from a Linux utility.

Cannondale

Great thought. Where would I look?

stephenw10

There is a Linux version of BootUtil. There might be something included with some distros.

You might also be able to simply move the IntelBootAgent entry below the hard drive in the boot order in the BIOS.

Cannondale

stephen, your last message prompted me to look at my BIOS boot priorities again.
The 1st Boot Device Priority was UEFI OS as expected. 2nd - 6th Boot Device Priorities were disabled.
However, under Network Device BBS Priorities, there were 4 entries for Intel Boot Agent (IBA) ports. I had these disabled at some point but some how that reappeared. I disabled all 4 entries and the IBA (CTRL+S) setup messages disappeared during boot up.

I did briefly remove the Quad port NIC while doing some other activities. I suspect that the Network Device BBS Priorities were enabled when the card was reinserted into the slot.

In any event, many thanks for helping solve this issue!