Installing Windows 7 to iSCSI Target

[nry]

After lots of messing around I finally got my ESXi hosts all diskless booting with iPXE. Works perfectly

I am now trying to dual boot two of my ESXi hosts using a PHP script, which seems to work. But I can't quite get Windows 7 ultimate x64 to run the installer.

Using PXE to chainload iPXE, I can successfully get a DHCP request sent etc and chainload a mac address specific URL.

In the hosts mac file I have the following

Code:

#!ipxe

set keep-san 1
sanhook iscsi:10.0.5.10:::7:iqn.2013-05.server:n2win
chain http://10.0.5.10/win7/boot.ipxe

In boot.ipxe it's copied from the wimboot page
http://ipxe.org/wimboot

Code:

#!ipxe

kernel wimboot
initrd bootmgr          bootmgr
initrd boot/bcd         BCD
initrd boot/boot.sdi    boot.sdi
initrd sources/boot.wim boot.wim
imgstat
boot

If I boot without any san commands, the windows 7 installer loads no problem, but obviously finds no disks to install to.
As soon as I introduce the sanhook or sanboot command into my iPXE script the installer will load the black setup start screen "Windows is loading setup files"
After this I get a grey (or white) blank screen.

Once again I assume I am missing something blatantly obvious. Anyone got any ideas?

[robinsmidsrod]

When you sanhook an iSCSI drive you'll incur 2x about 1 minute timeouts during booting of WinPE. This is unavoidable, unfortunately.

If you can't find a disk, you might be suffering from the iBFT default gateway issue. Try to add set netX/gateway 0.0.0.0 before the sanhook command in your script and it might work.

You can also remove the "set keep-san 1" flag, as sanhook does that by default. That flag only impacts the sanboot command, and is deprecated. New configurations should use sanhook where hooking is needed and sanboot when booting is intended.

[nry]

ipxe script now...

Code:

#!ipxe

sanhook iscsi:10.0.5.10:::7:iqn.2013-05.server:n2win
chain http://10.0.5.10/win7/boot.ipxe

Still have the same issue with the white screen. Left it for over 10 minutes but nothing!

[robinsmidsrod]

I would suggest modifying the BCD to include more logging during windows loading. If that doesn't give you anything, attaching a windows debugger (windbg) seems to be the only alternative.