iPXE Windows Environment

[zophar]

Hey everybody,

My question is a really NOOB one so be gentle

I already have PXELINUX or SYSLINUX installed in my environment but I have difficulties with ISO files and UEFI boot. When googling I found iPXE .

What I understand is that iPXE works with HTTP so I'm curious about the advantages that iPXE can do for me.

Like I said I work in a windows environment and I really don't find a good HOWTO. What I figured out is the settings on my DHCP server (option 67) which is different on a 2012r2 but I think I managed that issue. But I have to point to undionly.kpxe, where do I have to place this file - in the folder Remoteinstall ?

Can somebody please give me an example off boot.php so that I can figure out how it works.

Other question, is it 'stupid' to change PXELINUX to iPXE.

Many thanks for the responses

Christoph

[robinsmidsrod]

First off: If you want to boot a machine in UEFI environment, you need to use iPXE UEFI binaries, not the ones for lecay BIOS systems. undionly.kpxe, ipxe.pxe, 80861503.rom are all examples of files that work in the legacy BIOS environment. If you want to build files that work in a UEFI environment you need to build ipxe.efi, snponly.efi, 80861503.efidrv, 80861503.efirom etc.

The second thing is that UEFI support in iPXE is still not considered stable for production use, so don't blame us if it goes down in flames. There are some simple tutorials you can follow from networkboot.org on the getting started page (for windows), there is also http://ipxe.org/howto/msdhcp. If you already have pxelinux.0 working, then ipxe.pxe (or undionly.kpxe) should be place alongside pxelinux.0 in whichever folder is your TFTP root folder. If you install the TFTP client on your windows workstation it should be easy to check if you can fetch the file from the TFTP server before you actually try to boot it.

PXELinux and iPXE both have a similar feature set, just like you can use syslinux, grub or lilo to boot from local media. It's really your choice. PXELinux uses a more declarative approach, while iPXE has a procedural approach with scripts, which gives you a benefit that you can react better to errors and make more runtime choices. For PXELinux this kind of logic must usually be handled by some sort of server-side service. It's really up to you what you feel is more appropriate.