[syslinux] Running VMware ESXi network installer via syslinux/menu

[Steve Rikli]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 03:15:38PM +0100, Marki via Syslinux wrote:
> On 1/20/2024 1:03 AM, Adan Calderon wrote:
> > Remember the vmware versions of their loader are diffrent.
> 
> Phew, what does that mean? It's their "bootx64.efi".
> Running "file" on it says it's an "MS-DOS executable".

It's been a while since I tried to install VMware ESXi with PXELINUX, but
from my notes...

VMware uses custom loaders in their implementation of EFI, and it doesn't
appear to be loadable from standard PXELINUX; my workaround was to load
VMware's file directly from DHCP bootserver PXE/tftp settings.

That worked for me back in VMware 6.7 days, haven't tried newer versions
since then.

I suspect the same issue with VMware's EFI loader affects SYSLINUX as
well as PXELINUX, and that may be what is thwarting you.

Fwiw it seems like VMware have been doing this for a while; I also have
notes about their legacy BIOS loaders being incompatible with newer
PXELINUX (e.g. after circa SYSLINUX 3.86), and using undocumented
command line options.

Cheers,
sr.


> > I remember looking at the source for the mboot file and it was diffrent
> > from the syslinux version.
> 
> Not sure what this means either,
> 
> in any case I am using syslinux.efi, menu.c32 etc from syslinux 6 (6.03 to
> be precise)
> 
> Marki
> 
>
> > On Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 5:25 PM marki via Syslinux <syslinux at syslinux.org> wrote:
> >     Hello,
> > 
> >     So I'm running syslinux.efi
> >     Which loads menu.c32
> >     Which is supposed to start ESXi's bootx64.efi/mboot.efi
> > 
> >     But that gives
> > 
> >     """
> >     Loading mboot.efi... ok
> >     Invalid Boot signature 0x2, bailing out
> >     Booting kernel failed: Bad file number
> >     """
> > 
> >     Secure boot is disabled.
> > 
> >     Thoughts?
> > 
> >     The reason why it would be nice using PXE and syslinux here is
> >     because we have this automation set up where we can choose from
> >     the menu what we want to install and also use a templating
> >     mechanism.
> > 
> >     Best regards,
> >     Marki