[syslinux] Running VMware ESXi network installer via syslinux/menu

[Ralph Ronnquist]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2024 at 03:17:20PM +0100, Marki via Syslinux wrote:
> 
> On 1/20/2024 1:29 AM, Ralph Ronnquist via Syslinux wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 20, 2024 at 12:21:37AM +0100, marki via Syslinux wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > So I'm running syslinux.efi
> > > Which loads menu.c32
> > > Which is supposed to start ESXi's bootx64.efi/mboot.efi
> > > 
> > > But that gives
> > > 
> > > """
> > > Loading mboot.efi... ok
> > > Invalid Boot signature 0x2, bailing out
> > > Booting kernel failed: Bad file number
> > > """
> > Which syslinux version?
> I use syslinux 6.03
> > What is the APPEND for mboot.efi ?
> 
> Full statement is
> 
> label testi
> 
>   kernel mboot.efi
> 
>   append -c /pxelinux.cfg/templates/esxi80/ESX8TEST.cfg
> 
> But looking at the tftp logs it never tries to load anything related to
> ESX8TEST.cfg, I guess that's because it errors out before even looking at
> the append command

Ok; I think it's named "mboot.c32" also for EFI, and it needs to be
told which binary to load. Thus, it might work with the following
config:
----------
label testi
    kernel mboot.c32
    append /biosboot/pxechn.c32 -c /pxelinux.cfg/templates/esxi80/ESX8TEST.cfg
----------

You'll need to populate /biosboot/ with bios module pxechn.c32 and its
dependencies (ie. lib*), and I'd suppose this will only work if the
system does have support for legacy bios as well as uefi. I believe
the syslinux pxechn.c32 module is not compiled for uefi.

Ralph.

> 
> Marki
> 
> > 
> > (In order to boot The Hurd on Devuan I had to edit mboot as it handled
> > arguments differently from grub. This is published as version
> > 3:6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4+dfsg1-3+devuan6 in Devuan repo. So it
> > might be related here, or not)
> > 
> > Ralph.
> > 
> > > Secure boot is disabled.
> > > 
> > > Thoughts?
> > > 
> > > The reason why it would be nice using PXE and syslinux here is because we
> > > have this automation set up where we can choose from the menu what we want
> > > to install and also use a templating mechanism.
> > > 
> > > Best regards,
> > > Marki
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