[syslinux] PXE Booting EFI

Gene Cumm gene.cumm at gmail.com
Fri Jan 9 17:20:43 PST 2015


On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Ady <ady-sf at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm testing syslinux PXE EFI boot with VMware workstation 9.04 running
>> on Windows 8.1

I use Syslinux 6.03 EFI64 on a VMware Workstation 10 VM on 10.0.2 on Linux.

>> VMware correctly performs the DHCP request indicating either
>> the "EFI IA32" or "EFI BC" architecture and the TFTP server
>> correctly sends back w/o error the "corresponding" syslinux.efi
>> "EFI BC" -> EFI64\syslinux.efi
>> "EFI IA32"-> EFI32\syslinux.efi

I only send back 1 filename.

>> but it always hangs w/o requesting any other transfer,
>> I also tested using VMware 11 same results.

My VMs always request files.  I created a VMHW v10 VM then added:
  firmware = "efi"
to the VMX and had no issues.

Are they actually transferring the syslinux.efi files?  What values
are present in DHCP options 60 and 93?  I've found feeding EFI32
binaries to my VMs results in hangs/failures.

>> any idea?

6.03 as in the precompiled binaries.  I've successfully built EFI
binaries on Debian 7 and built failing EFI binaries on Ubuntu 12.04 (I
suspect due to gcc 4.7 versus 4.6).


>  ***
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>
>
> In some cases, when the adequate ldlinux.{c32,e32,e64} is not found,
> the behavior might seem as if there is no additional (re)action (i.e. a
> "real failure" would look very similar).
>
> So the first natural question would be, where are your
> ldlinux.{e32,e64} located, in relation to your EFI{32,64}/syslinux.efi
> files?
>
> You mentioned "EFI BC" (architecture type 07). Have you tried with EFI
> x64, architecture type 09?

in option 93, type 0x07 is actually used for EFI64 VMs that I've seen?

> Have you tried testing only one architecture at a time, without mixing
> EFI IA32 with EFI x64? I mean, not mixing (and not conditioning) them
> in config files nor in the actual Syslinux-related files in the server;
> testing isolated configs and files for EFI IA32 _only_ and then
> isolated configs and files for EFI x64 _only_.
>
> Perhaps you could post your TFTP/DHCP/whatever configuration files?
>
> Is there some setting in the VMWare products to configure which exact
> type of firmware (BIOS / EFI IA32 / EFI x64) is being used/expected by
> the VM?

And how are you switching between EFI IA32 and EFI x64?

> A packet capture might be helpful.
>
> I assume we are talking about Syslinux 6.03 official upstream binary
> files, downloaded from kernel.org (as oppose to some package or
> rebuild).

-- 
-Gene


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