[syslinux] EFI booting over network - can't then load anything

Spike White spikewhitetx at gmail.com
Sat Jun 7 06:10:41 PDT 2014


> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 08:13:36 -0700
> From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com>
> To: Andrew Rae <A.M.Rae at leeds.ac.uk>, "'syslinux at zytor.com'"
>         <syslinux at zytor.com>
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] EFI booting over network - can't then load
>         anything
> Message-ID: <5391DAA0.2050207 at zytor.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 06/06/2014 07:27 AM, Andrew Rae wrote:
> > Hi all..
> >
> > Quick one if someone could show me a line out of their configuration
for these two scenario's .
> >
> > We're trying to do two things via EFI64 network boot & SYSLINUX:
> > * boot a CentOS 6.5 installation vmlinuz/initrd.img combination -
machines just reboot after downloading the initrd.img.

This works for me for booting fedora 20 on pxelinux 6.0.3-pre6:

LABEL Fedora 20
   MENU LABEL ^Fedora 20
   MENU INDENT 6
   MENU DEFAULT
   KERNEL boot/fedora/vmlinuz
   APPEND initrd=/boot/fedora/initrd.img ramdisk_size=10000 ks=
http://192.168.0.100/fedora_generic_efi.cfg

I have also (BIOS) PXE-booted CentOS 6.2, but not on this pxelinux version.
Just haven't tried.  This works for that:

LABEL centos_i386
   MENU LABEL ^Centos 6.2/32
   MENU INDENT 6
   TEXT HELP
             Pick me!  Pick me!  If server in house, pick me!
   ENDTEXT
   KERNEL boot/centos/6.2/x86_64/vmlinuz
   APPEND ro root=/dev/sda initrd=/boot/centos/6.2/x86_64/initrd.img nofb
ramdisk_size=10000 ks="
http://192.168.0.100/oracle/OEL6/oel6.3-x86_64/ks_dhcp_amer.cfg"

> > * boot windows server 2012 r2 PE menu via bootmgfw.efi - unsure of the
commands to 'chain' load another .efi file. Everything I've tried has
failed.
> >
> > Both of these work if I switch to GRUB2 - but we want to use SYSLINUX
with EFI as we already use it with the older BIOS PXE booting.
> >
> > I also tried to load hdt as a test - that seemed to hang machines too.
> >
> > I've tried 6.02 and 6.03-pre13 (and a load in between) - all with no
success. All this has been tried with and without a menu. All tried in
VMWare workstation and with a couple of different physical machines.

I just tried OEL 6.5 and 6.3 on pxelinux 6.0.3-pre16.  Loads vmlinuz,
loads initrd.img and then catches a server fault.  Yet Fedora 20 loads
fine.

This is on VMWare workstation.  I'll try on physical server / physical PXE
server in a few days (once I have access again).

> The support for chaining another EFI isn't complete yet,
> unfortunately... we are kind of short-handed these days unfortunately :(
>
> The former "should" work, although I'm not sure how much testing has
> been done with kernels that old.

H Peter, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read this.

You are *so* right!  (And you are *so* wrong for saying so.)

Redhat released RHEL 6.5 ~Nov 18th.  (I know this because like many other
RHEL practioners, I was waiting in line.)  I'm guessing CentOS re-spun and
offered CentOS 6.5 five days later, that's fairly typical for downstream
providers.

RHEL is on an 18 month refresh cycle.  So RHEL 6.6 will come out Mar/Apr
2016.  Thus you're disparaging the latest and greatest for having an
old kernel.

And you're absolutely right!  It's kernel 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64.

In defense of Redhat, they also provide Fedora 20, based on kernel
3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64.

Spike


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