[syslinux] Still fighting localboot on EFI - looping

Alan Sparks
Mon, 26 Oct 2015 18:09:40 -0000

I'm still trying fruitlessly to get some sort of local disk boot from
syslinux EFI to work... using the 6.03 modules.  Tried various
combinations of configurations on Gene's test binaries.

For reference this is on different models of HP Proliant Gen-9 systems
with UEFI.   Firmware as up to date as it comes.   The UEFI boot order
has the hard drives and OS ESPs before the PXE interfaces (the default).
  A boot-from-cold loads the OS no problem.

Here's what I've tried so far:

* chain.c32 - doesn't work, as expected... just throws a 0D General
Protection Exception.

* "localboot 0" and "localboot -1" - If I perform a
"one time boot from
PXE", the system starts PXE and loads syslinux.efi OK, and via menu.c32
displays my menu and starts a countdown.   If it expires or I choose the
"localboot" option, the menu simply restarts (loops, appears to
reload),
displays the same menu and restarts the count.   Never moves on, doesn't
appear to go back and rerun the boot sequence or find the hard drive.
The TFTP server logs show it reloading the pxelinux.cfg file each time.

Has anyone any advice on how to make localboot work on EFI, any tricks?
 Is there any other alternatives?  Any debugging I can do on this end to
help?  Thanks in advance.
-Alan