Trouble building a working undionly.kpxe

[TheAmigo]

I'm doing my testing using VirtualBox 4.3.8 on Ubuntu 12.04. The reason I'm using undionly.kpxe is that I'm targeting a production environment that includes dozens of types of hardware and I want to use a single binary for everything.

When I download the pre-built undionly.kpxe (http://boot.ipxe.org/undionly.kpxe), it works fine.

But I want to add "console" and "colours" commands to it. So I downloaded the source via git and built my own undionly.kpxe.

With my build, I can download an initrd and a kernel, but when I boot the kernel, it can't find the initrd. I've been careful to change nothing in my setup other than undionly.kpxe. I can only assume I'm building it wrong.

Problematic builds start booting the kernel, but stop with "Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)". Good builds find the initrd, get past that and boot the OS without further issue. Currently, I can build versions that fall into one of three categories:
1) can't load a background picture, but can boot an OS
2) can load a background picture, but can't boot an OS
3) can't do either (obviously... we can all make something that doesn't work )

I have good builds that are larger than bad builds so I'm not suspecting size... or should I? Is there a size limit for virtualbox?

Suggestions welcome.

[robinsmidsrod]

Please post your iPXE boot script and an image/screenshot of the error you're seeing. If you don't see an error during the iPXE stage, replace "boot" with shell, and do an "imgstat" command to see which files have been downloaded and detected.

[mrreload]

I know, old thread but same issue here. Building ipxe.pxe instead and either using rom-o-matic site or compiling from source no OS will boot.
Booting Virtualbox from ipxe.iso for testing.

The embedded script is just this:
#!ipxe
dhcp
chain http://192.168.1.24/hoag.ipxe

The menu will load (with backgroung png) but with console enabled I cannot boot.
In Fact, when I use rom-o-matic to generate the iso with console enabled, it will crash virtualbox. When I make it from source, it will boot from it but not past a kernel panic.
"Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,255)"

sample item that works with console disabled but not enabled:

:Clonezilla
echo Starting CloneZilla with default options
kernel ${http-serv}/images/clonezilla/live/vmlinuz root=/dev/nfs boot=live netboot=nfs nfsroot=${nfs-ip}:${nfs-uri}/images/clonezilla locale=en_US.UTF-8 ip=dhcp ro
initrd ${http-serv}/images/clonezilla/live/initrd.img
boot || goto start
goto start

[mrreload]

I think I found the option that was causing the issue:
--keep
eg. console --picture ${nfs-base}/bkgr1024.png --keep
removed option and it's okay?

[robinsmidsrod]

Yup, that makes sense, because the picture was sent as an initrd to the clonezilla kernel, which it gets confused by. Removing --keep was the right solution. Running imgstat would've shown that.