From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 6 22:36:33 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63A021065672 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 2010 22:36:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from mail2.nber.org (mail2.nber.org [66.251.72.79]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED6FA8FC1A for ; Wed, 6 Oct 2010 22:36:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from nber6.nber.org (nber6.nber.org [66.251.72.76]) by mail2.nber.org (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id o96MaTbC060761 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NOT); Wed, 6 Oct 2010 18:36:29 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from nber6.nber.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nber6.nber.org (8.13.8+Sun/8.12.10) with ESMTP id o96MZa9k026334; Wed, 6 Oct 2010 18:35:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (Unknown UID 1079@localhost) by nber6.nber.org (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/Submit) with ESMTP id o96MZakO026331; Wed, 6 Oct 2010 18:35:36 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: nber6.nber.org: Unknown UID 1079 owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2010 18:35:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Feenberg To: Warren Block In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Anti-Virus: Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Linux Mail Server 5.6.39/RELEASE, bases: 20101006 #4280474, check: 20101006 clean Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Network booting FreeBSD with gpxelinx almost works X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:36:33 -0000 On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, Warren Block wrote: > On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, Daniel Feenberg wrote: > >> We have been network booting FreeBSD for some time with pxeboot. So I am >> confident that we have the dhcpd.conf and the root filesystem sufficient >> for diskless booting. But now we would like to have menu of OSs to boot and >> got the idea somewhere that gpxelinux could do that for us. We copied >> gpxelinux.0 from the syslinux-4.02 distribution and replaced pxeboot with >> "gpxelinux" in the dhcpd.conf file. Indeed with a configuration file in >> pxelinux.cfg like this: >> >> default freebsd >> label freebsd >> PXE pxeboot >> >> and the root path still specified as a DHCP option, FreeBSD 8.1 does boot. >> If I replace the first line with: >> >> UI menu.c32 >> >> the client does display the menu and but if one hits return to select the >> single item offered the client merely hangs for a minute, then announces >> "boot failure". I am guessing that once the UI is interposed, somehow the >> root path isn't getting transmitted to pxeboot. > > 4.01 works, both with menu.c32 and vesamenu.c32. I can't say I've > experimented much farther, but used it when writing this: > > http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/pxe.html > >> All the other gpxelinux boot kernels seem to expect the information about >> the root filesystem to be specified in the pxelinux.cfg file, rather than >> in dhcpd.conf. > > FreeBSD's pxeboot isn't as versatile as others. > >> Does anyone have experience with this? FreeBSD isn't mentioned anywhere I >> can find in the syslinux or gpxelinux documentation, and the various web >> posting I have found linking FreeBSD to gpxelinux are all about do >> installations of iso files over the net. > > Yes, that's one of the reasons I wrote the article above. > We finally got the thing working - by simply dropping gpxelinux and using pxelinux instead. Daniel Feenberg