gmane.network.ipxe.devel

Re: iPXE server

shouldbe q931 — 2013-05-22T18:45:29



I use cpuid in the following method

:wimboot8winpe-iscsi-iscsi
echo Booting Windows8 PE for ${initiator-iqn}
set root-path ${base-iscsi}:${sbase-iqn}:${mac}.boot.win7
sanhook ${root-path} || goto failed
set base-url ${boot-url}/wimboot
cpuid --ext 29 && set arch amd64 || set arch x86
kernel ${base-url}/wimboot8winpe
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/bootmgr                     bootmgr
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/Boot/BCD                    BCD
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/Boot/Fonts/segmono_boot.ttf segmono_boot.ttf
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/Boot/Fonts/segoe_slboot.ttf segoe_slboot.ttf
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/Boot/Fonts/wgl4_boot.ttf    wgl4_boot.ttf
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/Boot/boot.sdi               boot.sdi
initrd ${base-url}/${arch}/media/sources/boot.wim            boot.wim
boot || goto failed
goto start

Re: iPXE server

Andrew Bobulsky — 2013-05-22T17:35:43

Adding the list back in to my reply.  Generally on mailing lists like this
one, Reply All is a good practice ;)

Hello Marcel,

The error you're getting is coming from the first line in your script:




Your script as written doesn't actually make use of the ${arch} variable,
so you could delete the line, comment it out, or add two pipe characters to
the end of the line to tell iPXE to ignore the error and continue executing
the script.

Commented, it would look like this:





With the pipe operators (to ignore the error), it would look like this:





And finally, with the line deleted, your entire script should look like:




For more general info on how iPXE scripting works, take a look at the
online documentation here: http://ipxe.org/scripting
Good luck, and best regards,
Andrew


On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 8:34 AM, <m.m_de_vries-f/vm7P8qpiNmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: [PATCH] Fix loading tftp file from pxe bios call

Frediano Ziglio — 2013-05-22T16:14:15

Hi,
  here you are part of our tests (some require some close source binary
or some Windows products).

I used Qemu 1.2. Copy rom for rtl8159 as rtl8139.rom in the directory,
edit test.sh and run make. nasm, mkisofs and usual build tools required.

This will prove that files with '#' characters in the name does not work
without my patch.

Frediano

Re: using iPXE in a VM

Michael Brown — 2013-05-22T14:08:17

You are pressing Ctrl-B at the first prompt ("Press Ctrl-B to configure iPXE") 
rather than the second prompt ("Press Ctrl-B for the iPXE command line").

The first prompt executes during POST, when the BIOS has not yet completed 
initialisation.  It is intended to allow you to configure iPXE (using the 
"config" command, if your NIC supports non-volatile option storage), and to 
perform last-ditch emergency system recovery.  It is not intended to be used 
for general-purpose booting.

Try pressing Ctrl-B at the second prompt instead, and you should find that 
everything works as expected.

Michael

Re: using iPXE in a VM

Andrew Bobulsky — 2013-05-22T01:36:14

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Gruher, Joseph R <joseph.r.gruher-ral2JQCrhuE< at >public.gmane.orgm


Hello Joe,

This is a very frequent problem, and it has more solutions than I can
count.  The best one I've come up with to date is documented on the wiki,
but not yet linked from the main page.  Basically, BIOSes sometimes don't
work properly when iPXE hands control back to the BIOS to continue to boot
order.  My preferred solution is to just force the issue with GRUB4DOS; as
a side effect, it's a very compatible fix, even on machines that *do*
behave properly :)

Linky for you: http://ipxe.org/appnote/work_around_bios_halting_on_ipxe_exit

Best Regards,
Andrew Bobulsky

using iPXE in a VM

Gruher, Joseph R — 2013-05-21T23:46:01

Hello-

I am trying to use iPXE with a VM in VMWare ESXi 5.1.  For the most part it seems to be working.  I created a VM with an emulated e1000 network adapter and an iPXE ROM.  I edited the VM to use the iPXE ROM for the network adapter BIOS.  When I start the VM iPXE comes up and I can enter the CLI.  I can configure an IP and successfully sanhook a target.  The next step I then want to do is exit iPXE and boot into an OS installer CD to install my guest OS on the VM.  However, after I run the "exit" command in iPXE, nothing happens, it does not continue to the next boot device.

I've done something similar on physical hardware and it works well, although in that case I'm booting iPXE from a USB key, rather than as the NIC ROM, but otherwise the process is the same and works.

Even here on the VM, if I do not CTRL-B to the iPXE CLI and just let it execute the default iPXE behavior, it will bring up iPXE and look for PXE servers, and then fall through to the OS installer CD just fine, exactly as desired.  S

Re: iPXE server

Andrew Bobulsky — 2013-05-21T01:30:36

bHello Marcel,

You've asked a lot of questions here, so I'll do my best to answer them
inline with your original message.

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 7:30 AM, <m.m_de_vries-f/vm7P8qpiNmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:



The BCD and WIM files that you provide to Wimboot can be modified, as it
looks like you have done, to start an automatic installation.  The
important thing to realize here, though, is that wimboot isn't really a
utility for installing Windows, it's just designed to help you PXE boot
Windows PE in a modular fashion.  The contents of the BCD don't have any
influence on Windows Setup, so the easiest method for you to create two
different Windows PE boot directories, identical in every way except for
the boot.wim file.  In one boot.wim, pack in your automatic Windows 7 Home
setup script.  Put them in side-by-side directories such that you can
create two iPXE scripts, name the first directory win7home and the second
win7pro.  Using the example from the wimboot web page, script 1 could
be named w

Re: iPXE server

shouldbe q931 — 2013-05-20T15:17:48

 . How can I force the client to load the boot.ipxe file with http or load it with tftp. I followed the instructions on http://ipxe.org/wimboot. Is it possible to start an installation of Win
 do

You could have more than one wimboot environment...

iPXE server

2013-05-20T11:30:43

Hello,

I have set up a pxe-server from which I can install Ubuntu and Windows7. But when I boot PE-environment for installing WIndows it stops with a dis shell. Then I have to make e new script to start the actual installation. That's not what I want. The solution is simple, make a startup script in the boot.wim file and it will start. OK that works. But now comes a problem, whenI want to seperate a Windows 7 home installation from a Windows 7 Pro installation. The problem is that I can only point to the .wim file and than the BCD file wil be loaded. But there is no way to load another BCD file or .wim file. I tried iPXE but now I have the problem that the client doesn't load boot.ipxe with the http protocol. It persist with the tftp protocol and keeps telling me that it could not find the file. 
 How can I force the client to load the boot.ipxe file with http or load it with tftp. I followed the instructions on http://ipxe.org/wimboot. Is it possible to start an installation of Windo
 ws7 Home and Windows7

Re: bootmgfw.efi and simple filesystem support

Jarrod Johnson — 2013-05-18T23:16:34

I was thinking about an optional script command to uninstall PxeBaseCode
from the device handle.  I haven't gotten to experiment/ask exactly how
bootmgfw.efi detects network versus fielesystem device.  I'm also not
positive it will work without subdirectory support yet.  My hope would be a
script seeking to 'spoof' a block device could do so without perturbing the
network aspect of the device handle.

The issue I see if always subjecting the chained efi executable to a brand
new (presumably non-pxe) device is that it would break working clients of
the ipxe download protocol.  This was my challenge with Geoff Lywood's
patch in the beginning, elilo broke pretty badly.  I suppose the argument
would be in this case you trick elilo, and esxboot in the same manner as
I'm trying to trick bootmgfw.efi.  However both esxboot and elilo support
for injecting the boot interface mac address would break...

I maintain that the best fix for snponly.efi breakage is to fall back to
device handle indicated by loaded handle if

Re: iPXE build failure on Fedora 19 (rawhide)

Daniel P. Berrange — 2013-05-17T09:36:48

Thanks for pointing to that. It at least allows the compile to
succeed.

Regards,
Daniel

Re: iPXE build failure on Fedora 19 (rawhide)

Robin Smidsrød — 2013-05-16T17:56:04

You might want to try out this workaround patch by Christian Hesse
posted little over a month ago.

http://www.mail-archive.com/ipxe-devel< at >lists.ipxe.org/msg02309.html

Some people claim success with it.

Re: iPXE build failure on Fedora 19 (rawhide)

Daniel P. Berrange — 2013-05-16T14:45:13

I was wondering if you had any success in resolving this problem
with builds under gcc 4.8.0 ?

I just checked latest ipxe GIT master and see the same problem
still

gcc  -DARCH=i386 -DPLATFORM=pcbios -march=i386 -fomit-frame-pointer -fstrength-reduce -falign-jumps=1 -falign-loops=1 -falign-functions=1 -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -mregparm=3 -mrtd -freg-struct-return -m32 -fshort-wchar -Ui386 -Ulinux -DNVALGRIND -Iinclude -I. -Iarch/x86/include -Iarch/i386/include -Iarch/i386/include/pcbios -Os -g -ffreestanding -Wall -W -Wformat-nonliteral   -fno-stack-protector  -fno-dwarf2-cfi-asm -fno-exceptions  -fno-unwind-tables -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -Wno-address  -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -include include/compiler.h   -DOBJECT=pxe_call -c arch/i386/interface/pxe/pxe_call.c -o bin/pxe_call.o 
arch/i386/interface/pxe/pxe_call.c: In function ‘pxe_start_nbp’:
arch/i386/interface/pxe/pxe_call.c:292:1: error: bp cannot be used in asm here
 }
 ^
make: *** [bin/pxe_call.o] Error 1


Regards,
Daniel

Re: iPXE help

Robin Smidsrød — 2013-05-16T12:00:17

Indeed it works too. I always forget about that one...

The nice thing about that tool is that it seems to only list removable
devices, which should limit the chance of doing something really bad. I
do tend to check the drive manager and removable storage tray icon
before I use these tools, though. I just verified that win32diskimager
is indeed capable of writing ipxe.usb to a tiny 32MB USB stick I have
lying around. For iPXE testing, it is just about the right size. :)

Re: iPXE help

Christian Helmuth — 2013-05-16T11:41:11

Hello,

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 11:37:58AM +0200, Robin Smidsrød wrote:

Couldn't this gap be easily filled with a tool like
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ which originated
from Ubuntu. Other distros might have similar tools.

Greets

Re: iPXE help

Robin Smidsrød — 2013-05-16T09:37:58

Or you can use http://rom-o-matic.eu/, and paste the above script into
the "embedded script" text area and you should be ready to go. You'll of
course need to write the ipxe.usb file directly to a USB stick, which is
a bit tricky to do in Windows. I've used dd for windows, found at
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd, but it is a bit tricky to use. Make sure
you use the right device path, or you might accidentally overwrite a
drive you care about.

Re: iPXE help

Michael Brown — 2013-05-15T20:49:38

You can find instructions on embedding scripts at

  http://ipxe.org/embed#embedding_within_the_ipxe_binary

To create a bootable USB image with an embedded script, you will need 
something like:

  make bin/ipxe.usb EMBED=myscript.ipxe

where myscript.ipxe contains an iPXE script similar to:

  #!ipxe
  dhcp
  chain http://my.web.server/boot.php

This image can then be transferred to a USB key using

  dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sdX

You will need a Linux system in order to build iPXE (or any Unix-like system, 
such as Mac OS X).

Michael

iPXE help

Gray, Michael E. — 2013-05-15T20:34:09

We area Church / School who would like to utilize the IPXE boot options, preferably off a USB drive.  We are well versed in DOS, WINDOWS not Linux however.  Is there any way to gather a image for a USB thumb drive and be able to edit the script file to boot from a specified location. Thank you.



Michael E. Gray
IT Specialist,
Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia /
Calvary Christian Academy

Re: [PATCH] Fix loading tftp file from pxe bios call

Frediano Ziglio — 2013-05-15T16:25:26

Ok, then I'll send on ML just to have an opinion.

Frediano

Re: [PATCH] Fix loading tftp file from pxe bios call

Michael Brown — 2013-05-15T15:09:36

iPXE does have some automated self-tests but the scope is limited to 
code which requires no external interaction, such as testing the TCP/IP 
checksumming, RSA algorithm, X.509 certificate validation, settings 
fetch/store etc.

Michael

Re: [PATCH] Fix loading tftp file from pxe bios call

Frediano Ziglio — 2013-05-15T15:05:16

I don't know. The file name was something like "test#123" and on
wireshark a "test" file was requested.

I have a small test environment (which use Qemu, dnsmasq and some binary
files) which try to use such strange names. Does iPXE have some
automatic tests so I can add mine too?

Frediano