Syslinux - May 2003 - load pxelinux w/o PXE BIOS?

Hi,

hm at seneca.muc.de schrieb am 29.05.03 21:40:34:
> I would like to load pxelinux as a second stage bootloader from a machine
> which does not have a PXE BIOS (namely, from a VMware guest machine) in
> order to perform an automated Linux installation. A boot floppy would
> be nice. It seems that there are some commercial solutions around but
> is there someting in the OSS arena?  I've been googling for it for some
> time but no luck.
> 
> Yes I could also use etherboot/netboot (w/o pxelinux) but the point is I
> have a install server environment which does work just fine, and would
> like to use VMware GSX as a demo setup on my laptop. This should be as
> much as the live setup as possible.
The two things I know of:
- bootix has floppy images of its PXE roms. Didn't try them, but you could
try www.bootix.de. These
are demos of the roms, so maybe they do what you need.
- The etherboot developers had some plans to extend etherboot to support PXE.
But AFAIK
nothing usable is available, the only thing that is possible is to load a
etherboot rom via pxelinux, and then let that take control over the network card
(loading the kernel 'the etherboot way').

Regards,

Josef

______________________________________________________________________________
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Josef Siemes wrote:
> The two things I know of:
> - bootix has floppy images of its PXE roms. Didn't try them, but you
could try www.bootix.de. These
> are demos of the roms, so maybe they do what you need.
> - The etherboot developers had some plans to extend etherboot to
support PXE. But AFAIK
> nothing usable is available, the only thing that is possible is to
load a etherboot rom via pxelinux, and then let that take control over
the network card (loading the kernel 'the etherboot way').
I pointed hm at seneca.muc.de to the Webpage
( http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php#floppy )
because of "rbfg", the "free (as in Beer)" downloadable PXE
stack on a
Floppy disk...

bye
Christian
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> I would like to load pxelinux as a second stage bootloader from a machine
> which does not have a PXE BIOS (namely, from a VMware guest machine) in
> order to perform an automated Linux installation. A boot floppy would
> be nice. It seems that there are some commercial solutions around but
> is there someting in the OSS arena?  I've been googling for it for some
> time but no luck.
pxelinux needs PXE; by definiton you need a PXE BIOS to run it or any
other PXE NBP (PXE jargon for the 2ary loader); it must reside somewhere
accessible before the OS boot and have a driver for your (maybe virtual)
NIC.

The only existing open source PXE layers I am aware of are: NILO based
on OSkit; this could boot from a floppy (but I believe the project has
died) and some work done on etherboot which apparently resulted in a
minimal PXE subset specifically to support FreeBSD, but which never made
the big time. A (finished) PXE layer on top of Etherboot is being
actively discussed on the etherboot-developers list and seems quite
likely to happen soon; the converse (Etherboot-on-PXE, i.e. Etherboot
chained as a NBP and with a driver for PXE UNDI) is now being tested.
PXE-on-Etherboot would not export the full PXE API, but enough to
support the common NBPs. pxelinux would probably be the first target.
> Yes I could also use etherboot/netboot (w/o pxelinux) but the point is I
> have a install server environment which does work just fine, and would
> like to use VMware GSX as a demo setup on my laptop. This should be as
> much as the live setup as possible.
Well, Etherboot and pxelinux configs can live side by side on a single
dhcp server quite happily (use the REQUIRE_VCI_ETHERBOOT build option on
rom-omatic), so you could swallow your pride and set up with Etherboot
in the first instance until PXE-on-Etherboot comes along.

hm at seneca.muc.de wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to load pxelinux as a second stage bootloader from a machine
> which does not have a PXE BIOS (namely, from a VMware guest machine) in
> order to perform an automated Linux installation. A boot floppy would
> be nice. It seems that there are some commercial solutions around but
> is there someting in the OSS arena?  I've been googling for it for some
> time but no luck.
> 
http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php

Look for "PXE stack on a floppy"

However, I thought at least current versions of VMWare had a PXE support 
you could enable.

	-hpa

hm at seneca.muc.de wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
>>Look for "PXE stack on a floppy"
> 
> 
> Yes, this works. I was hoping there is something in the OSS domain :-)) 
> 
It looks like the Etherboot folks might be looking at putting in enough
PXE support to run PXELINUX some time in the near future.  Until then I
think RBFG is what there is.

	-hpa

hm at seneca.muc.de wrote:
>On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 10:31:48AM -0700, Michael Blandford wrote:
>  
>
>>The PXE stack on a floppy works within VMware but it is really slow.  It
>>may take 5 minutes or more to boot.
>>
>>However, it works and I appreciate Peter working on it!
>>    
>>
>
>Oh does it? Which VMware version and build are you using? 4.0.0-4460
>(downloaded today so must be pretty recent) dumps core. It also doesn't
>allow me to set debug mode for more info because if I do and power on the
>machine, an error message says "there is a more recent version
available".
>Duh... 
>  
>
I have done it with 3.2, 4.0.0-4388, and 4460.

I will even attach a screen shot of me doing it right now on 4460.

Michael

> I would like to load pxelinux as a second stage bootloader from a machine
> which does not have a PXE BIOS (namely, from a VMware guest machine) in
> order to perform an automated Linux installation. A boot floppy would
You can take a look at the Linbox Backup Server's files.
They have :
- a grub based boot loader with pxe support (revoboot.pxe)
- and an etherboot disk with PXE emulation which works with vmware

I use this daily to boot vmware in diskless mode.
You should read the pdf documentation to see how it works. You can use 
the files in the tarballs since nearly everything is under GPL.

http://www.linbox.com
ftp://ftp.linbox.com/pub/lbs

Cheers,

-- 
Ludovic DROLEZ                                       Free&ALter Soft
152, rue de Grigy - Technopole Metz 2000                  57070 METZ
tel : 03 87 75 55 21                            fax : 03 87 75 19 26

hm at seneca.muc.de wrote:
>Anyway I tried pxelinux-2.03 now instead of 2.04 which produces the crash.
>2.03 works slooooooow within a VM but it works. It actually takes more
>than 5 minutes to TFTP a 900KB kernel and a 5MB initrd. Which makes it
>like 20-25 KB/s.
>
>Does anybody have an idea what _is_ so slow here? 
>
>- Is it pxelinux' TFTP client within a VM? 
>  
>
I am not sure of the cause.  However, using the rfbg floppy on a real 
box is very fast.  It is definitely a vmware/pxelinux related issue.

I would be happy to help diagnose this problem is someone has some 
insight as to what to try.
>To recapitulate: as for the crash, this is VMware WS 4.00-4460 w/
>pxelinux 2.04. The warning "You do not have VMware tools
installed"
>isn't very meaningful here because you install them in a guest OS as
>soon as it is installed, not before.
>  
>
Does the vmware log give you any more insight/data?

Michael