[syslinux] PXE Booting EFI

Patrick Masotta masottaus at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 10 02:26:47 PST 2015


> ****
>FWIW, I still cannot reply to emails sent to the Mailing List when the 
>original sender comes from yahoo (the whole dmarc issue). I am manually 
>circumventing the problem this time, but I wish subscribers would 
>consider not using yahoo email addresses for this Mailing List.
> ****
****
I have to say this list is a real PITA; for some reason Yahoo is flagging
all its messages as spam by default probably because the messages do not 
include as the main sender the list itself but the one that posted; that means
I have to white-list "all the members" in order to not miss a message.
Switching Yahoo for Gmail is scary; being logged to Google is not good.
It would be really awesome having a better system to follow this project.
a sourceforge forum wouldn't be better?
****

>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).
>
Even when "this is is not my case" I wonder if syslinux.efi shouldn't
print in the screen something in the case of a missing component 
and not just to let the thing hang...

>So the first natural question would be, where are your 
>ldlinux.{e32,e64} located, in relation to your EFI{32,64}/syslinux.efi 
>files?
>
They are next to syslinux.efi but they are never TFTP requested 

>You mentioned "EFI BC" (architecture type 07). Have you tried with EFI 
>x64, architecture type 09?
>
The DHCP service provide the corresponding NBP Path/FileName considering the 
requested arch

>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_.
>
Sure but this is not related to configuration files; the first NBP TFTP retrieved hangs;
there's no any other component nor configuration file ever requested


>Perhaps you could post your TFTP/DHCP/whatever configuration files?
>
I could do that but I'm positively sure you won't find anything there...


>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?
>
Bios vs EFI is done adding a switch to the VM conf file
EFI IA32 v EFI x64 is automatically set by VMware considering the VM's target OS architecture


>A packet capture might be helpful.
>
You will only see how a perfect TFTP transfer delivers syslinux.efi. That's it.

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

Thanks
Pat

>Regards,
>Ady.
 
 >> 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).
 
 
 >  ***
 > FWIW, I still cannot reply to emails sent to the
 Mailing List when the
 > original sender comes from yahoo (the whole dmarc
 issue). I am manually
 > circumventing the problem this time, but I wish
 subscribers would
 > consider not using yahoo email addresses for this
 Mailing List.
 >  ***
 >
 >
 > 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
 



More information about the Syslinux mailing list