Spike White
2014-Jun-07 13:10 UTC
[syslinux] EFI booting over network - can't then load anything
> Message: 3 > Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 08:13:36 -0700 > From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> > To: Andrew Rae <A.M.Rae at leeds.ac.uk>, "'syslinux at zytor.com'" > <syslinux at zytor.com> > Subject: Re: [syslinux] EFI booting over network - can't then load > anything > Message-ID: <5391DAA0.2050207 at zytor.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > On 06/06/2014 07:27 AM, Andrew Rae wrote: > > Hi all.. > > > > Quick one if someone could show me a line out of their configurationfor these two scenario's .> > > > We're trying to do two things via EFI64 network boot & SYSLINUX: > > * boot a CentOS 6.5 installation vmlinuz/initrd.img combination -machines just reboot after downloading the initrd.img. This works for me for booting fedora 20 on pxelinux 6.0.3-pre6: LABEL Fedora 20 MENU LABEL ^Fedora 20 MENU INDENT 6 MENU DEFAULT KERNEL boot/fedora/vmlinuz APPEND initrd=/boot/fedora/initrd.img ramdisk_size=10000 kshttp://192.168.0.100/fedora_generic_efi.cfg I have also (BIOS) PXE-booted CentOS 6.2, but not on this pxelinux version. Just haven't tried. This works for that: LABEL centos_i386 MENU LABEL ^Centos 6.2/32 MENU INDENT 6 TEXT HELP Pick me! Pick me! If server in house, pick me! ENDTEXT KERNEL boot/centos/6.2/x86_64/vmlinuz APPEND ro root=/dev/sda initrd=/boot/centos/6.2/x86_64/initrd.img nofb ramdisk_size=10000 ks=" http://192.168.0.100/oracle/OEL6/oel6.3-x86_64/ks_dhcp_amer.cfg"> > * boot windows server 2012 r2 PE menu via bootmgfw.efi - unsure of thecommands to 'chain' load another .efi file. Everything I've tried has failed.> > > > Both of these work if I switch to GRUB2 - but we want to use SYSLINUXwith EFI as we already use it with the older BIOS PXE booting.> > > > I also tried to load hdt as a test - that seemed to hang machines too. > > > > I've tried 6.02 and 6.03-pre13 (and a load in between) - all with nosuccess. All this has been tried with and without a menu. All tried in VMWare workstation and with a couple of different physical machines. I just tried OEL 6.5 and 6.3 on pxelinux 6.0.3-pre16. Loads vmlinuz, loads initrd.img and then catches a server fault. Yet Fedora 20 loads fine. This is on VMWare workstation. I'll try on physical server / physical PXE server in a few days (once I have access again).> The support for chaining another EFI isn't complete yet, > unfortunately... we are kind of short-handed these days unfortunately :( > > The former "should" work, although I'm not sure how much testing has > been done with kernels that old.H Peter, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read this. You are *so* right! (And you are *so* wrong for saying so.) Redhat released RHEL 6.5 ~Nov 18th. (I know this because like many other RHEL practioners, I was waiting in line.) I'm guessing CentOS re-spun and offered CentOS 6.5 five days later, that's fairly typical for downstream providers. RHEL is on an 18 month refresh cycle. So RHEL 6.6 will come out Mar/Apr 2016. Thus you're disparaging the latest and greatest for having an old kernel. And you're absolutely right! It's kernel 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64. In defense of Redhat, they also provide Fedora 20, based on kernel 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64. Spike
H. Peter Anvin
2014-Jun-07 19:37 UTC
[syslinux] EFI booting over network - can't then load anything
On 06/07/2014 06:10 AM, Spike White wrote:>> >> The former "should" work, although I'm not sure how much testing has >> been done with kernels that old. > > H Peter, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read this. > > You are *so* right! (And you are *so* wrong for saying so.) > > Redhat released RHEL 6.5 ~Nov 18th. (I know this because like many other > RHEL practioners, I was waiting in line.) I'm guessing CentOS re-spun and > offered CentOS 6.5 five days later, that's fairly typical for downstream > providers. > > RHEL is on an 18 month refresh cycle. So RHEL 6.6 will come out Mar/Apr > 2016. Thus you're disparaging the latest and greatest for having an > old kernel. > > And you're absolutely right! It's kernel 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64. > > In defense of Redhat, they also provide Fedora 20, based on kernel > 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64. >Yes, what I meant is that from a technology point of view it is a 2.6.32 kernel, which is 4.5 years old. This matters a lot for EFI support, because the whole direction of how EFI is supported has changed in the meantime. -hpa
Hi all, wasnt sure whether this was the best place to put this information; but something seems to have gone 'backwards' in the later pre-releases of 6.03 regarding network booting. below are results of me testing - i did each a few times to make sure they are valid results. hope it helps identify something that's gone awry ? so far, 6.03 pre11 and pre13 (excluding efi32) seem most stable for PXE/EFI Network booting.... Cheers Andrew ---------------- all on VMWare Workstation 9 (Windows) - booting from DHCPD & TFTPD-hpa on Centos 6 x64 all booting RHEL7 kernel/initrd over TFTP or HTTP, and then loading the install.img from HTTP.... ---------------- 6.03-pre11 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boota OK TFTP 6.03-pre12 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP 6.03-pre13 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP 6.03-pre14 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP 6.03-pre15 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP 6.03-pre16 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP 6.03-pre17 BIOS: pxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP ---------------- 6.03-pre11 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP & HTTP 6.03-pre12 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: very slow compared to pre11. boots TFTP & HTTP 6.03-pre13 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP & HTTP 6.03-pre14 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: very slow compared to pre13. some odd 'tftpd: read: connection refused' and 'tftpd: read(ack): connection refused'. never boots - normally sits downloading vmlinuz & does nothing further 6.03-pre15 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: as per pre14 6.03-pre16 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: as per pre14 6.03-pre17 BIOS: lpxelinux.0: boots OK TFTP & HTTP ---------------- 6.03-pre11 EFI32: boots OK TFTP & HTTP 6.03-pre12 EFI32: fails - gets stuck in a loop downloading files - differs each boot 6.03-pre13 EFI32: fails - downloads /pxelinux.c32 & /ldlinux.c32 - then continually retries to download ldlinux.e32 6.03-pre14 EFI32: fails - downloads /pxelinux.c32 & /ldlinux.e32 - also then tries to download /syslinux/ldlinux.e32, /boot/isolinux/ldlinux.e32, and /syslinux/ldlinux.e32 - then boot fails 6.03-pre15 EFI32: fails as per pre14 6.03-pre16 EFI32: fails as per pre14 6.03-pre17 EFI32: fails as per pre14 ----------------- 6.03-pre11 EFI64: fails - gets stuck in a loop downloading files - differs each boot 6.03-pre12 EFI64: fails - downloads /pxelinux.e64 & /ldlinux.e64 - then continually retries to download ldlinux.e64 6.03-pre13 EFI64: boots OK TFTP & HTTP 6.03-pre14 EFI64: fails - downloads /pxelinux.e64 & /ldlinux.e64 - then continually retries to download ldlinux.e64 6.03-pre15 EFI64: fails as per pre14 6.03-pre16 EFI64: fails as per pre14 6.03-pre17 EFI64: fails - downloads /pxelinux.e64 & /ldlinux.e64, also then tries to download /syslinux/ldlinux.e64, /boot/isolinux/ldlinux.e64, and /syslinux/ldlinux.e64 - then boot fails -------------------