Luke Ledgerd
2014-Nov-24 06:09 UTC
[syslinux] Windows PE booting without chainloading ipxe
I have an interest in booting Windows PE from PXELinux, and it seems that wimboot from ipxe project is the solution. http://ipxe.org/wimboot MENU LABEL Windows 8.1 Enterprise PE Rescue (wimboot) com32 linux.c32 /wimboot APPEND initrdfile=/windows/win81/bootmgr,/windows/win81/boot/bcd,/windows/win81/boot/boot.sdi,/windows/win81/sources/boot.wim The initrdfile= is supported in Syslinux from patches to5.03 onwards on the mailing list but it seems wimboot has moved on from last year so the documentation on various blogs saying this can be done is obsolete. http://www.syslinux.org/archives/2012-October/018708.html What I'm trying to do is outlined here: http://www.howtogeek.com/162070/it-geek-how-to-network-boot-pxe-the-winpe-recovery-disk-with-pxelinux-v5-wimboot/ Cmdline.c in wmiboot is not happy, it's freaking out at the presence of the initrdfile= option in the boot arguments. This I'll patch now and see what happens. I'm going to go onto the ipxe chainloading way of solving this problem if I can't patch wimboot into submission. I just thought I'd let you know that it would be great if you developers could add an INITRDFILE option to the syslinux config that loads raw initrd disks the ipxe way, without appending stuff to the kernel boot argument. That way an unpatched wimboot from ipxe could be made to work. Cheers, Luke Luke Ledgerd / Internal IT Add: 156 Xa Dan II, 14th Floor, ?????????Dong Da District, Hanoi, Vietnam. Mobile Vietnam: +84 (0) 995304270 Email: luke.ledgerd at niteco.se Skype: luke-ledgerd-niteco Web: http://niteco.se
Ferenc Wagner
2014-Nov-25 10:48 UTC
[syslinux] Windows PE booting without chainloading ipxe
Luke Ledgerd <luke.ledgerd at niteco.se> writes:> I just thought I'd let you know that it would be great if you > developers could add an INITRDFILE option to the syslinux config that > loads raw initrd disks the ipxe way, without appending stuff to the > kernel boot argument. That way an unpatched wimboot from ipxe could be > made to work.You get independent control of the initrd and the command line though the boot_it() Lua function: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Lua.c32 Unfortunately, 6.03, the latest released Syslinux version has some bugs in that area, though it may still work just well enough for your purposes. Recently I reworked that interface and fixed some bugs, you may want to test that if you're up to compiling Syslinux yourself; see https://github.com/wferi/syslinux/blob/pub/com32/lua/doc/syslinux.asc -- Feri.