[syslinux] gpxelinux.0 and slow HTTP performance on VMware ESX VM

[Andrew Stuart]

On 6/30/2011 10:33 AM, syslinux at schlomo.schapiro.org wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Am 30.06.2011 19:15, schrieb Andrew Stuart:
>> Did you try the above without gPXE/gpxelinux.0 ? Your logs indicate you
>> are still using gPXE. It's my understanding that a wrapper is not needed
>> for 4.10 since it has native http (I haven't had the chance to
>> personally try it).
>
> Yes of course. The access log shows 2 boot attempts. The first one with
> gpxelinux.0 4.04 (to show that it worked) and the 2nd one with
> pxelinux.0 4.10
>
Sorry, I missed that fact, still too early here (not a morning person).

>> If for some reason you do need gPXE, I might suggest you try
>> www.ipxe.org as gPXE is 'dead', ipxe was forked, and is actively being
>> contributed to and maintained. Many issues with gPXE have been corrected
>> in iPXE.
>
> Thanks, I was not aware of this fork. Are there any plans to build an
> ipxelinux.0 that is based on ipxe?
>
They were talking about it, and the ipxe folk actually created a 
version, but I believe that was for 4.04 or earlier. But now that 
pxelinux has it's own http stack, I have no idea, I would imagine so 
since sanboot is not supported directly [yet].

>> Lastly, Trolling these lists [syslinux|ipxe] I have seen mention that
>> vmware's pxe stack leaves a lot to be desired. I know from personal
>> experience with Workstation [6|7], and esxi [3|4] that pxe booting is
>> slightly slower then real hardware, but it's been 'fast enough' that I
>> haven't tried to look into it further.
>
>> As a curious side thought, I wonder if anyone has tried to replace
>> vmwares pxe option rom with gPXE/iPXE...
>
> Good idea, do you know how to do that for hundreds of VMs and
> automatically have it done for new VMs?
>
> Kind Regards,
> Schlomo
>

No, sorry not a developer, just a dabbler.

It's been a while since I had a need to fool with vmwares bios, even 
longer for ESX. Google is your friend here, but essentially you need to 
extract the bios from one of files on the host, find a rom tool, delete 
the old rom, and add the new. I believe you would have to have one rom 
for every major version, and the file is also usable on esxi.

 From there, you upload the file, and modify the vm's vmx file to 
include the rom file. "bios440.filename = mod.rom" at least for 
workstation, the name may be the same on esx. Of course on a small scale 
this is easily handled via ssh/editor.

On a large scale, It should be feasible to automatically do this via 
ssh, but I wonder if the SDK has a means to upload files / make the vmx 
changes (which seeing your setup, I suspect you would know about)

But, the big question, which is the question I asked, but not directly, 
is, if it's even possible. I haven't had the need/tried to embed the rom 
for vmware.

In my case, vmware is used for servers which are rarely changed (vm 
wise) / light development work, so a delay of 10 seconds or so (which is 
what it seems like here, it could be higher) isn't a big deal.

-A