[syslinux] PXELINUX 6.03 / vesamenu.c32 hang

[Jackson, Dan]

Hello,

I'm experiencing an issue where if I use vesamenu.c32 with PXELINUX 6.03 when network booting a virtual machine hosted on VMware ESXi 6.0, it hangs (the version message is printed and then nothing - the VM has to be powered off and back on again).

This happens no matter if I choose the E1000 network interface or the VMXNET3 network interface when creating the VM.

The same problem does not happen if I change the configuration to use menu.c32 instead of vesamenu.c32.

Both vesamenu.c32 and menu.c32 came from the same zip file as the PXELINUX binary. All PXELINUX related files came from the "bios" area of said zip file, and the VM is also set to use BIOS booting rather than EFI (this is because there are many older machines in our organisation which either do not support or are not set up for EFI booting).

I do not experience this problem when booting a physical machine.

Our setup is as follows:

PXE server: Windows Server 2008 R2 running Windows Deployment Services
DHCP server: not on the same server, WDS is authorised in DHCP
PXELINUX version: 6.03 (but it was originally 4.04, I upgraded to see if it was some kind of bug which had been fixed in a later version)
PXELINUX files in Boot/x64 and Boot/x86:

pxelinux.cfg\default
chain.c32
ldlinux.c32
libcom32.c32
libmenu.c32
libutil.c32
memdisk
menu.c32
pxelinux.com (renamed from pxelinux.0 as per instructions here http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=WDSLINUX)
vesamenu.c32

Contents of pxelinux.cfg\default:

DEFAULT      vesamenu.c32
#DEFAULT      menu.c32
PROMPT       0
NOESCAPE     1
ALLOWOPTIONS 0
# Timeout in units of 1/10 s
TIMEOUT 300
MENU MARGIN 10
MENU ROWS 16
MENU TABMSGROW 21
MENU TIMEOUTROW 26
#MENU COLOR BORDER 30;44                    #20ffffff #00000000 none
#MENU COLOR SCROLLBAR 30;44                              #20ffffff #00000000 none
#MENU COLOR TITLE 0                   #ffffffff #00000000 none
#MENU COLOR SEL   30;47                            #40000000 #20ffffff
#MENU BACKGROUND MyMenuBackgroundPicture640x480.jpg
MENU COLOR SCREEN                   37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f none
MENU COLOR BORDER                  37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f
MENU COLOR PWDBORDER        37;41     #ffffffff #ff7f0000 none
MENU COLOR PWDHEADER         37;41     #ffffffff #ff7f0000 none
MENU COLOR PWDENTRY                            37;41     #ffffffff #ff7f0000 none
MENU COLOR TITLE                         37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f
MENU COLOR TIMEOUT                37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f none
MENU COLOR TIMEOUT_MSG   37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f none
MENU COLOR UNSEL                      37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f none
MENU COLOR SCROLLBAR            37;44     #ffffffff #ff00007f
MENU TITLE PXE Boot Menu
#---
LABEL wds
MENU LABEL Windows Deployment Services
MENU PASSWD [redacted]
KERNEL pxeboot.0
#---
LABEL memtest
MENU LABEL memtest86+ v4.20
KERNEL memtest
#---
LABEL seatools
MENU LABEL SeaTools for DOS v2.23
LINUX memdisk
INITRD seatools.ima
#---
LABEL wdcdlg
MENU LABEL Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics v5.04f
LINUX memdisk
INITRD wdc_diag.img
#---
LABEL dban2
MENU LABEL DBAN v2.2.6 Beta
MENU PASSWD [redacted]
KERNEL dban.bzi
APPEND nuke="dwipe" silent
#---
LABEL pmagic
MENU LABEL PartEd Magic 6.3
MENU PASSWD [redacted]
LINUX pmagic/bzImage
INITRD pmagic/initramfs
APPEND edd=off load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw vga=normal loglevel=9 max_loop=256
#---
LABEL Abort
MENU LABEL AbortPXE
KERNEL abortpxe.0
#---
LABEL local
MENU DEFAULT
MENU LABEL Boot from Harddisk
LOCALBOOT 0

Can anyone suggest what might be the problem?

Thanks,
Dan Jackson (Lead ITServices Technician).
Long Road Sixth Form College
Cambridge, UK.


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