IPXE Wimboot UEFI

[seb]

hi all,

I'm having hard time to boot winpe 5.0 X64 image with IPXE + Wimboot.
I currently use undionly.kpxe (IPXE 1.0.0+) and wimboot 2.3.0
with a Embed ipxe script

#!ipxe
kernel http://x.x.x.x/tests/wimboot/wimboot pause
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/bootmgr.efi bootmgr.efi
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/EFI/Micr...o_boot.ttf segmono_boot.ttf
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/EFI/Micr...slboot.ttf segoe_slboot.ttf
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/EFI/Micr...4_boot.ttf wgl4_boot.ttf
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/EFI/Micr...r_boot.ttf kor_boot.ttf
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/EFI/Micr...4_boot.ttf wgl4_boot.ttf
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/Boot/bcd bcd
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/Boot/boot.sdi boot.sdi
initrd http://x.x.x.x/tests/winpe5/x64/sources/boot.wim boot.wim
imgstat
prompt
boot

but during wimboot process, bootmrg.exe is extract from boot.wim and use to start setup instead of the bootx64.efi provide in my script.

Is it a problem related to UEFI environement ? or Wimboot ? or else ?

thanks for any help

[seb]

Ok, I have my answer

It's not possible with unionly.kpxe, i need to use ipxe.efi (x64bits) + PXE stack activate on motherboard

Now i have to find the right method to load a winpe 5.0 x86 image.
So this thread is still open to your advices

[thild]

Using the documentation available here:
http://ipxe.org/howto/winpe

I was able to load a winpe 5.0 image.

Are you still having issues ?

[robinsmidsrod]

For those of you finding this via web search: The example is somewhat broken. undionly.kpxe is for legacy BIOS environments, not UEFI. If seb is indeed loading ipxe/wimboot via undionly.kpxe he's not using a UEFI environment and the option to extract bootmgr.exe from boot.wim is the correct approach.

With recent wimboot you don't need to include all the font files and any version of bootmgr. It's all taken care of by wimboot directly during boot by extracting the required files from boot.wim. You only need to load BCD, boot.sdi and boot.wim as initrds now.

[jacoub]

(2014-10-02 16:36)seb Wrote:  Ok, I have my answer

It's not possible with unionly.kpxe, i need to use ipxe.efi (x64bits) + PXE stack activate on motherboard

Now i have to find the right method to load a winpe 5.0 x86 image.
So this thread is still open to your advices

Kindly advise where to download ipxe.efi

[jacoub]

(2014-12-03 15:11)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  For those of you finding this via web search: The example is somewhat broken. undionly.kpxe is for legacy BIOS environments, not UEFI. If seb is indeed loading ipxe/wimboot via undionly.kpxe he's not using a UEFI environment and the option to extract bootmgr.exe from boot.wim is the correct approach.

With recent wimboot you don't need to include all the font files and any version of bootmgr. It's all taken care of by wimboot directly during boot by extracting the required files from boot.wim. You only need to load BCD, boot.sdi and boot.wim as initrds now.

what to use instead of undionly.kpxe in UEFI environment
thanks

[robinsmidsrod]

You can try to build ipxe.efi using the build environment on http://rom-o-matic.eu/ if you don't have access to a Linux machine (or VM) to build the binaries you need. Normally you can build ipxe.efi by replacing the .efirom filenames shown in the example at the bottom of http://ipxe.org/download.

[jacoub]

(2015-03-09 10:32)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  You can try to build ipxe.efi using the build environment on http://rom-o-matic.eu/ if you don't have access to a Linux machine (or VM) to build the binaries you need. Normally you can build ipxe.efi by replacing the .efirom filenames shown in the example at the bottom of http://ipxe.org/download.

appreciated but the site is very slow & fails to build most of the times. i will keep trying
when I choosed advanced a lot of options are available which I have no idea what that supposed to mean. If you can suggest some references that will be awesome

thanks for your kind support

[robinsmidsrod]

If rom-o-matic.eu is slow or fails to build, or it's hard to understand what the options do, I would recommend you open up an issue on https://github.com/xbgmsharp/ipxe-buildweb/issues to improve it. Most of the options are somewhat explained by searching for the phrase on http://ipxe.org/.

My recommendation is to get a Linux VM set up so that you can build the binaries you need yourself without need of a third party. Personally I prefer Ubuntu LTS for that purpose, but you should be able to use anything you're familiar with, Linux Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, SUSE, etc.

[jacoub]

(2015-03-10 10:20)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  If rom-o-matic.eu is slow or fails to build, or it's hard to understand what the options do, I would recommend you open up an issue on https://github.com/xbgmsharp/ipxe-buildweb/issues to improve it. Most of the options are somewhat explained by searching for the phrase on http://ipxe.org/.

My recommendation is to get a Linux VM set up so that you can build the binaries you need yourself without need of a third party. Personally I prefer Ubuntu LTS for that purpose, but you should be able to use anything you're familiar with, Linux Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, SUSE, etc.

Apreciate the time you spend to reply
respect & regards

[jacoub]

(2015-03-10 10:20)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  If rom-o-matic.eu is slow or fails to build, or it's hard to understand what the options do, I would recommend you open up an issue on https://github.com/xbgmsharp/ipxe-buildweb/issues to improve it. Most of the options are somewhat explained by searching for the phrase on http://ipxe.org/.

My recommendation is to get a Linux VM set up so that you can build the binaries you need yourself without need of a third party. Personally I prefer Ubuntu LTS for that purpose, but you should be able to use anything you're familiar with, Linux Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, SUSE, etc.

Finally the site went up after several emails & I was able to Downloaded snponly.efi
Set DHCP option 67 to snponly.efi
Set DHCP 67 iPXE to http://192.168.30.1/liveUEFI.ipxe
the contents liveUEF.ipxe
#!ipxe
kernel wimboot
initrd bootmgfw.efi bootmgfw.efi
initrd boot/bcd BCD
initrd boot/boot.sdi boot.sdi
initrd win7/sources/boot.wim boot.wim
boot
These files were obtained from a live Windows 8.1 x64 DVD
I'm able to boot Windows 8.1x64 UEFI on VMWare Workstation 11
I failed to boot on both Physical machine & Hyper-V

Tried the same exercise using iPXEx64.efi it worked on VMWare but failed again both Physical & Hyper-V
Tried the same exercise using iPXEx32.efi it failed on all platforms

Any idea how to create a standard procedure to work on all VMWare, Physical & Hyper-v

For your information I used Microsoft Deployment Services "WDS" on Windows Server 2012R2 & imported all these live Windows 7, 8 & 8.1 even Acronis PE all products of Paragon & O&O and I was always able to boot both BIOS & UEFI using WDS. I'm trying to achieve the same using Wimboot any advices


Thanks in advance and best regards,
Jacoub

[sebus]

Any more on this? Eventually need to move to UEFI boot & want to keep wimboot as an option

[NiKiZe]

If you boot ipxe.efi then wimboot will run in efi mode, which in turn will extract and run the efi variant of windows bootmgr.

In the OP unidonly.kpxe (which is legacy BIOS only and not EFI) was trying to be used to start a EFI binary, which simply is not possible.

[sebus]

I now need to make ipxe.efi boot from MS DHCP Windows Server 2012 R2

Followed this - https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.p...-Existence
but so far the EFI IPv4 network boot did not want to pickup the specified (option 67) ipxe.efi - more tests needed

[power270]

(2016-08-03 18:09)sebus Wrote:  I now need to make ipxe.efi boot from MS DHCP Windows Server 2012 R2

Followed this - https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.p...-Existence
but so far the EFI IPv4 network boot did not want to pickup the specified (option 67) ipxe.efi - more tests needed

I followed a similar guide and I have this working for EFI X86, EFI X64 and BIOS. I use Tiny PXE server instead of WDS.

You could use IPHELPER on your switch with Tiny PXE Server running in proxydhcp mode. With this config, the architecture is passed to the PXE server and it serves the proper file automatically.