[syslinux] Windows PE booting without chainloading ipxe

[Luke Ledgerd]

Adding an option for initrdfile= boot argument to be ignored by wimboot worked just fine.
They can add this patch, which is probably most sane, or syslinux could add the INITRDFILE configuration option instead of having to append the option for linux.c32

   wimboot-2.4.0/src/cmdline.c @ Line ~107
             } else if ( key == cmdline ) {
                        /* Ignore unknown initial arguments, which may
                         * be the program name.
                         */
                } else if ( strcmp( key, "initrdfile") == 0 ) {
                        /* Ignore this to make this kernel work with sylinux */
                } else {
                        die ( "Unrecognised argument \"%s%s%s\"\n", key,
                              ( value ? "=" : "" ), ( value ? value : "" ) );
                }

I can now boot Windows 8.1 Enterprise PE with Sysinux :)

Luke.


-----Original Message-----
From: Luke Ledgerd 
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2014 1:10 PM
To: 'syslinux at zytor.com'
Subject: Windows PE booting without chainloading ipxe

I have an interest in booting Windows PE from PXELinux, and it seems that wimboot from ipxe project is the solution.
http://ipxe.org/wimboot

MENU LABEL Windows 8.1 Enterprise PE Rescue (wimboot)
com32 linux.c32 /wimboot
APPEND initrdfile=/windows/win81/bootmgr,/windows/win81/boot/bcd,/windows/win81/boot/boot.sdi,/windows/win81/sources/boot.wim

The initrdfile= is supported in Syslinux from patches to5.03 onwards on the mailing list but it seems wimboot has moved on from last year so the documentation on various blogs saying this can be done is obsolete.
http://www.syslinux.org/archives/2012-October/018708.html

What I'm trying to do is outlined here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/162070/it-geek-how-to-network-boot-pxe-the-winpe-recovery-disk-with-pxelinux-v5-wimboot/

Cmdline.c in wmiboot is not happy, it's freaking out at the presence of the initrdfile= option in the boot arguments.
This I'll patch now and see what happens.
I'm going to go onto the ipxe chainloading way of solving this problem if I can't patch wimboot into submission.

I just thought I'd let you know that it would be great if you developers could add an INITRDFILE option to the syslinux config that loads raw initrd disks the ipxe way, without appending stuff to the kernel boot argument. That way an unpatched wimboot from ipxe could be made to work.

Cheers,

Luke




Luke Ledgerd / Internal IT

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