Dan Jackson
2023-Jul-20 09:41 UTC
[syslinux] UEFI bootable USB stick to allow PXE booting with USB ethernet adaptors?
Hello,
It's an Acer Swift SF114-31.
The existing PXE server that we are trying to boot from is Microsoft
Configuration Manager (also known as SCCM or MECM). I tried putting the boot
image itself on a USB stick manually but while I got the initial Configuration
Manager wallpaper appearing, after a short period it just rebooted itself. It
does appear that there may be a native ConfigMgr way to create a minimal USB
stick without needing to include everything and the kitchen sink, so I'll be
investigating that as well.
The USB ethernet adapters are Realtek based. I put together a USB stick with an
EFI Shell, a copy of the Realtek USB UNDI EFI driver and a copy of iPXE and this
combination was after some fiddling able to initialise the network adapter,
however it's unsuccessful in booting from the PXE image. Hence why I was
investigating whether Syslinux might be able to help in some way.
Thanks,
Dan Jackson (Network & Systems Engineer)
Long Road Sixth Form College
Cambridge, UK
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael D. Setzer II <mikes at guam.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 10:25 AM
To: Dan Jackson <djackson at longroad.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [syslinux] UEFI bootable USB stick to allow PXE booting with USB
ethernet adaptors?
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of Long Road Sixth Form College. Do
not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the
content is safe.
Couple of things?
1. What brand of laptops are these that don't include Ethernet
adaptor, but do support UEFI?? Perhaps knowing hardware info?
2. I've use PXE boot on a local network with syslinux long ago with
regular ethernet in PCs, but never got UEFI to work with syslinux.
3. Have used grub4dos to create USBs that have both the regular
and UEFI booting on the same flash. My disk imaging project then
load its kernel and ramdisk.lzma files into ram, but I've included
regular ethernet in the setup, but don't have wifi adapters.
4. What is the PXE image file? Not sure why it can't be put on a
bootiable flash?
5. What kind of image is this. Window's what or Linux What.
6. What kind of USB ethernet adapters are you talking about?
Think lot more info would be needed.
On 20 Jul 2023 at 8:31, Dan Jackson via Syslinux wrote:
To: "syslinux at syslinux.org" <syslinux at
syslinux.org>
Date sent: Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:31:23 +0000
Subject: [syslinux] UEFI bootable USB stick to allow PXE
booting with USB
ethernet adaptors?
From: Dan Jackson via Syslinux <syslinux at
syslinux.org>
Send reply to: Dan Jackson <djackson at longroad.ac.uk>
> Hello,
>
> At my workplace we have some laptops that don't have a built in
Ethernet adaptor and don't natively support PXE booting using a USB Ethernet
adaptor.
>
> Is it possible to create a UEFI bootable USB stick with Syslinux that can
somehow kickstart the PXE boot process using the USB Ethernet adaptor? If so,
how would we do that?
>
> Unfortunately due to the nature of the boot image, simply writing the boot
image to a USB stick and trying to boot off that does not work, we specifically
need to PXE boot it.
>
> Thanks,
> Dan Jackson (Network & Systems Engineer)
> Long Road Sixth Form College
> Cambridge, UK
>
> Thank you for your email which we will respond to as quickly as we can.
Please be aware that to support the wellbeing of our staff and students, Long
Road Sixth Form College does not routinely respond to emails outside of our
usual working hours.
>
> --
>
>
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+------------------------------------------------------------+
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mailto:mikes at guam.net
mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
Guam - Where America's Day Begins
G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Thank you for your email which we will respond to as quickly as we can. Please
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Sixth Form College does not routinely respond to emails outside of our usual
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Frantisek Rysanek
2023-Jul-20 12:19 UTC
[syslinux] UEFI bootable USB stick to allow PXE booting with USB ethernet adaptors?
Dear gents, apologies for responding to the private message:> 1. What brand of laptops are these that don't include Ethernet > adaptor, but do support UEFI??That would be the whole market segment under 500 GBP, for the last maybe 6 generations of Intel CPU's :-) [/jokes aside] So... you do know about iPXE, and you know your way around - good. Realtek is a popular brand, and to me it can mean either the old 10/100Mb RTL8150, or the recent-ish 10/100/1000 RTL8153. Knowing that even the classic PCI-based NIC's are sometimes troublesome when PXE-booting, I'd expect USB-based NIC's to be definitely more of a problem. Interesting that you've got an EFI driver binary for the card :-) Makes me wonder how it addresses USB support. How did you arrange that the driver gets loaded before the iPXE binary? Start an EFI shell, run the driver binary (TSR style), then run iPXE? I've had some brief encounters with the EFI shell before, but not very reassuring. Have you tried starting a fresh version iPXE directly, instead of the EFI shell?> ...unsuccessful in booting from the PXE image. >Any details in what way it failed? Have you tried the same "UEFI PXE-boot kickstart USB stick" in some other, less degenerate PC, perhaps with some classic PCI(-e) NIC ? With BIOS support for PXE turned *off*, just to make sure :-) As to isolate, whether the problem in the desired laptop has to do with the USB NIC, or someplace completely different. Makes me wonder to what extent that server-side software stack by Microsoft is able to PXE-boot in UEFI mode, and if it needs UEFI PXE services in the on-motherboard ROM to succeed. As mentioned before, I'm using a "vanilla" stack on Linux. I can see that the binary of ipxe.efi has been combined (rebuilt) to include the following script: [contents of embed.ipxe] #!ipxe dhcp chain tftp://192.168.x.y/ipxe/menu.ipxe [/embed.ipxe] See also https://ipxe.org/embed So the ipxe.efi, as served by my DHCP+TFTP, is told where to load the menu script. These are the relevant contents of my menu.ipxe: [menu.ipxe] #!ipxe #console --picture tftp://192.168.what.ever/ipxe/background.png #prompt --key 0x02 --timeout 2000 Press Ctrl-B for cmd && shell || menu Please select a profile to boot: item memtest Memtest86+ 6.2 (memtest.org) item --gap Windows PE: item win10pe Windows 10 PE on bare metal choose profile && goto ${profile} :memtest kernel tftp://192.168.x.y/os/memt620i64.efi imgargs memt620i64.efi keyboard=both usbinit=3 boot :win10pe kernel nfs://192.168.x.y/tftpboot/ipxe/wimboot gui initrd nfs://192.168.x.y/tftpboot/PE/wimboot/boot/bcd BCD initrd nfs://192.168.x.y/tftpboot/PE/wimboot/boot/boot.sdi boot.sdi # boot.wim is a symlink to Win10PE.WIM initrd nfs://192.168.x.y/tftpboot/PE/wimboot/src/boot.wim boot.wim # sleep 5 boot [/menu.ipxe] Wimboot is an intermediate bootloader module, companion to iPXE. AFAICT, it loads the *whole* WIM image into RAM, so it doesn't need UEFI PXE services to start the kernel. The WIM can contain Windows drivers for the typical LAN cards, or the image can function without LAN access. I have no clue how we arrived at the boot.wim - somebody else's responsibility :-) But I believe it's an almost original Microsoft installer image. If I remember correctly, we just had to extract the BCD and boot.sdi manually. Actually, here you are, original documentation: https://ipxe.org/wimboot I guess we couldn't get around the silly message of the Windows installer, requiring you to "press any key to boot from DVD" if it finds Windows already installed on a hard drive present in the system... In this case, you have to wait for iPXE to finish loading the WIM image into ramdisk, which can take a minute, and then be ready to hit any key within about 3 seconds... Frank On 20 Jul 2023 at 9:41, Dan Jackson via Syslinux wrote:> > Hello, > > It's an Acer Swift SF114-31. > > The existing PXE server that we are trying to boot from is Microsoft > Configuration Manager (also known as SCCM or MECM). I tried putting > the boot image itself on a USB stick manually but while I got the > initial Configuration Manager wallpaper appearing, after a short > period it just rebooted itself. It does appear that there may be a > native ConfigMgr way to create a minimal USB stick without needing to > include everything and the kitchen sink, so I'll be investigating that > as well. > > The USB ethernet adapters are Realtek based. I put together a USB > stick with an EFI Shell, a copy of the Realtek USB UNDI EFI driver and > a copy of iPXE and this combination was after some fiddling able to > initialise the network adapter, however it's unsuccessful in booting > from the PXE image. Hence why I was investigating whether Syslinux > might be able to help in some way. > > Thanks, > Dan Jackson (Network & Systems Engineer) > Long Road Sixth Form College > Cambridge, UK > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael D. Setzer II <mikes at guam.net> > Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 10:25 AM > To: Dan Jackson <djackson at longroad.ac.uk> > Subject: Re: [syslinux] UEFI bootable USB stick to allow PXE booting with USB ethernet adaptors? > > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of Long Road Sixth Form College. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe. > > Couple of things? > 1. What brand of laptops are these that don't include Ethernet > adaptor, but do support UEFI?? Perhaps knowing hardware info? > 2. I've use PXE boot on a local network with syslinux long ago with > regular ethernet in PCs, but never got UEFI to work with syslinux. > 3. Have used grub4dos to create USBs that have both the regular > and UEFI booting on the same flash. My disk imaging project then > load its kernel and ramdisk.lzma files into ram, but I've included > regular ethernet in the setup, but don't have wifi adapters. > 4. What is the PXE image file? Not sure why it can't be put on a > bootiable flash? > 5. What kind of image is this. Window's what or Linux What. > 6. What kind of USB ethernet adapters are you talking about? > > Think lot more info would be needed. > > > On 20 Jul 2023 at 8:31, Dan Jackson via Syslinux wrote: > > To: "syslinux at syslinux.org" <syslinux at syslinux.org> > Date sent: Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:31:23 +0000 > Subject: [syslinux] UEFI bootable USB stick to allow PXE > booting with USB > ethernet adaptors? > From: Dan Jackson via Syslinux <syslinux at syslinux.org> > Send reply to: Dan Jackson <djackson at longroad.ac.uk> > > > Hello, > > > > At my workplace we have some laptops that don't have a built in Ethernet adaptor and don't natively support PXE booting using a USB Ethernet adaptor. > > > > Is it possible to create a UEFI bootable USB stick with Syslinux that can somehow kickstart the PXE boot process using the USB Ethernet adaptor? If so, how would we do that? > > > > Unfortunately due to the nature of the boot image, simply writing the boot image to a USB stick and trying to boot off that does not work, we specifically need to PXE boot it. > > > > Thanks, > > Dan Jackson (Network & Systems Engineer) > > Long Road Sixth Form College > > Cambridge, UK > > > > Thank you for your email which we will respond to as quickly as we can. Please be aware that to support the wellbeing of our staff and students, Long Road Sixth Form College does not routinely respond to emails outside of our usual working hours. > > > > -- > > > > [https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.longroad.ac.uk%2f_site%2fdata%2ffiles%2fimages%2flogos%2fF077AFDB9FEBB77F977D7E6C09DA751F.png&c=E,1,8oh_xWxyf31T4FLz9xMR70WcOrHhlkdsRBynbgjT7Jr_5dVj3deYEeH31tASV8qZeAK3t2jv3lwV4OiWosKwKIcL5jCSzrK437PKSqzA48-Sq1gUjWzU5hY,&typo=1]<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.longroad.ac.uk&c=E,1,wpWnadIC4Kb0T9kMlGgET3mJPD5o7VK1XVXCR-I_jsb2UkCzyFLHKi0s4skGCNjEUuHkhC3NkvI5E5toiBviEgShmAQSz9-CGIfW01wDY6yqu3PMHLTEc3qgEw,,&typo=1> > > > > [https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.longroad.ac.uk%2f_site%2fdata%2ffiles%2fimages%2f76DB28695AB2A957B1812BD75CC585E1.png&c=E,1,dWID1ilzsMkpn5VvCQj1Z5VKM8I6dBx6K77kvS_2MuAPjqibv2G81TFSDTry-3ZbOMj7Mt68Wg0_gU4lT5muBJsfA14lk_R6KnRFCBpW8tn-sEO_pKKQYknCA-nu&typo=1]<https://www.facebook.com/LongRoadSixthFormCollege/> [https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.longroad.ac.uk%2f_site%2fdata%2ffiles%2fimages%2fCE703F46CFAF86CA4D3BBF0AB2232A7F.png&c=E,1,DNDzDmer9Y4NX_DBlh7j07olpX8XOzfADThcwm7XwUgC0_wENx4g8RgPnI9H6xRvpHPNyAVpgiDkeaO02891SC2a9buMSXgLJA2_IMj1ttQXBg,,&typo=1] <https://twitter.com/LR6FC> [https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.longroad.ac.uk%2f_site%2fdata%2ffiles%2fimages%2f3DF251EAAF6B9B15CF4C8EC453B73AFA.png&c=E,1,MgzRf6EgjniG2L9A4WwSOMdGRaZ1nPdjvKgAJbRh1c3mtcZdfm-g2m9HWleUWFb3WgHOJCqAVoPCfmBVnQOHJanI323fQrTsgmi8TixhjyRLQjbs&typo=1] <https://www.instagram.com/lr6fc/> > > > > This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual(s) to whom it is addressed. If you receive this email by mistake please notify the sender and delete it immediately. This communication represents the originator's personal views and opinions which do not necessarily reflect those of Long Road Sixth Form College. Please be aware that any encrypted files emailed to Long Road may be subject to a delay. > > _______________________________________________ > > Syslinux mailing list > > Submissions to Syslinux at syslinux.org > > Unsubscribe or set options at: > > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2flists.syslinux.org%2fsyslinux&c=E,1,VFSsGbnxb-15ySy1d73jDCB9iJQ8Q6jmfYqF8AmDKKe_yzkC2umqsLmAGAQ1ErnQcNNxsjEHkgDIfj6BqGQCR2bV0zTiZdj3zR71xaWLkA,,&typo=1 > > > +------------------------------------------------------------+ > Michael D. Setzer II - Computer Science Instructor (Retired) > mailto:mikes at guam.net > mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com > Guam - Where America's Day Begins > G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer > http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/ > +------------------------------------------------------------+ > > > > Thank you for your email which we will respond to as quickly as we can. Please be aware that to support the wellbeing of our staff and students, Long Road Sixth Form College does not routinely respond to emails outside of our usual working hours. > > -- > > [https://www.longroad.ac.uk/_site/data/files/images/logos/F077AFDB9FEBB77F977D7E6C09DA751F.png]<https://www.longroad.ac.uk> > > [https://www.longroad.ac.uk/_site/data/files/images/76DB28695AB2A957B1812BD75CC585E1.png]<https://www.facebook.com/LongRoadSixthFormCollege/> [https://www.longroad.ac.uk/_site/data/files/images/CE703F46CFAF86CA4D3BBF0AB2232A7F.png] <https://twitter.com/LR6FC> [https://www.longroad.ac.uk/_site/data/files/images/3DF251EAAF6B9B15CF4C8EC453B73AFA.png] <https://www.instagram.com/lr6fc/> > > This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual(s) to whom it is addressed. If you receive this email by mistake please notify the sender and delete it immediately. 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