Sanboot Slitaz Live CD

[hsuanyeh]

Recently, iPXE has been improved to allow sanbooting live CD without the need of MEMDISK. I have tested sanboot slitaz ISO CD and it works really well. You may follow below steps to set up your own environment.

1. Download Slitaz CD ISO here.

2. Make Slitaz CD ISO as an iSCSI target.

You may edit "/etc/iet/ietd.conf" and add the following two lines:

Code:

Target iqn.2011-05.com.domain:Slitaz.iso
Lun 0 Path=/path/to/slitaz-3.0.iso,Type=fileio,IOMode=ro

Then, restart your iSCSI target.

Code:

# service iscsi-target restart

This target should be ready for boot.

3. Sanboot Slitaz:

Start your machine (physical or virtual) with "ipxe.iso" or "ipxe.dsk", and press Ctrl-B to bring up the command line. Then, type in the following commands.

Code:

iPXE> dhcp
iPXE> sanboot iscsi:<IP of iSCSI target server>::::iqn.2011-05.com.domain:Slitaz.iso

Follow the instruction on the screen, you should be able to boot to Slitaz's desktop environment.

4. Notes:
So far, only Slitaz has been successfully booted. It appears that other distros have problem finding the live CD media. If you have any success with other live CD distros, please kindly share your experience. Enjoy!

Hsuanyeh

[hsuanyeh]

I have prepared a floppy image that can sanboot Slitaz 3.0 Live CD from my server. You may download it here. Please let me know if it works. Thanks!

[robinsmidsrod]

I was able to boot the FreeDOS install CD (fdfullcd.iso) and install to another iscsi hooked drive. Not completely without failure, and very slow, but it worked. Just avoid creating a iscsi disk larger than 64GB and you should have less problems than I had.

[lstraath]

I have been able to boot a W7x86pe iso, problems i have had with this setup that it can run on one piece of hardware and fail on another. It should be able on all hardware to be usefull. One remark many things i tryed fail on some virtual machines. Using VM workstation 8, esx3.5 and VBox 4 for testing and they fail more often then fysical machines. iscsi booting iso files did not work at all on VM Workstation 8.

[lstraath]

Correction to my last post, i can get Slitaz.iso to boot on VM workstation now. My problem was that i used:
undionly.kpxe
pxelinux.0 (latest version)
default com32/vesamenu.c32
label 2iscsi
menu label ^slitaz-3.0.iso iscsi
kernel com32/gpxecmd.c32
append sanboot iscsi:freenas.ls.local::::iqn.2008-01.local.ls:slitaz-3.0.iso

when is just sanboot from undionly.kpxe it works. I did read all forum treads now and found more questions about chaining several things together and fail when they did, but it seems to be more stable if you don't chain to much. Robin, do you know what is the most stable way to go and still have a menu? I already read your ipxe script menu but it is limited because the script language is very limited altough it will work.

[robinsmidsrod]

I'm not sure how chaining impacts stability, but I do know it is probably wise to avoid using both UNDI and native driver in the same setup, as it can probably cause code confusion. That basically means avoiding ipxe.lkrn syslinux menu entries if you're using an undionly.kpxe chainloading setup.

I'd like to know if my suggestion is sane. Please provide feedback.

[lstraath]

You could be right about that it could mean UNDI and native driver both be active on the same device will cause trouble.
However i already have issues when chainloading undionly.kpxe-->pxelinux.0+vesamenu.c32-->sanboot livecd.iso

And undionly.kpxe-->sanboot livecd.iso is more stable (read works on more types of hardware).

But i want to use pxelinux for the menu's

Sanboot by the way of a livecd is even with undi incredible fast, thumbs up for ipxe on that one.