[syslinux] can pxe localboot report failure to bios

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Thu May 19 15:42:32 PDT 2005


Carl Karsten wrote:
>  > Okay... ALL the pxelinux "localboot" arguments mean continue to the 
> next boot device -- assuming the BIOS/PXE supports it (which a lot of 
> them don't.) "localboot 0" is the normal mode; "localboot 4" and 
> "localboot 5" are special-purpose boots.
> 
> 
> On a laptop that is set to LAN, HD - it booted the HD.
> 
> On a box set to Floppy, HD, booting EtherBoot floppy, I get
> boot:
> Booting from local disk
> probing pci nic...
> probing isa nic...
> <sleep>
> 
> and then it re-enters EtherBoot, but not from the start - it skips the 
> "loading rom image...." and just displays
> Boot from (N)etwork or (Q)uit.
> and then boots from net.
> 
> I am guessing this is an EtherBoot problem?
> 

No.  If you boot from a disk medium (floppy, USB key, hard disk) there 
is no way to "return to the BIOS", so "localboot 0" is fundamentally 
incapable of doing anything for you.  In other words, if you want to 
boot to disk at this point, you have to use chain.c32.

Similarly with standard PXE stacks for older BIOSes.

	-hpa




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