ipxe on usb

[ebonweaver]

I was referred to ipxe from gpxe, neither of which seem to want to work on USB. I have used gpxe on CD from ISO and it works great, but I'd like to have the convenience of USB if possible. With gpxe the dd operation (ubuntu 12 LTS) resulted in a corrupt drive structure and unreadable files. With ipxe it produces a blank drive. Copying the ISO files to a USB stick with gpxe resulted in booting to a black screen. With ipxe it results in a black screen with GRUB and a flashing cursor in the corner.

If anyone has gotten a USB stick with ipxe to boot, how did you make it? Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, all on hand, whatever works.

[robinsmidsrod]

The first thing you need to do is to create the ipxe.usb file. You can do that with make bin/ipxe.usb or you can download it from http://rom-o-matic.eu/ if that is easier for you. This file is a raw block device image, and does not contain a valid filesystem, but specialized content that boot iPXE.

You'll need to use the entire USB stick for it, as there is no (useful) partition table in the disk image. On a Linux machine, the way to transfer the image is to figure out which device node is your USB stick, and completely overwrite it with the iPXE image file.

Running ls -l /dev/disk/by-id should list the disks recognized on the system. Ignore all the -part files (they represent partitions, not whole disks). Then you do the following to write the image out: dd if=path/to/ipxe.usb of=/dev/disk/by-id/my-usb-stick-name (replace with what you found above in the output from ls -l)

Be careful not to overwrite the wrong device, or you'll need to recover its contents from a backup.

[Gelip]

• read this instructions
• simply make bin/ipxe.lkrn or download from http://rom-o-matic.eu
• format USB with USB Disk Storage Format to make USB boot
• use GRUB4DOS to make bootable GRUB
• copy files menu.lst, grldr and ipxe.lkrn to root USB
  

menu.lst

Code:

default 0

title iPXE
kernel /ipxe.lkrn

[ab_ipxe]

I tried using dd if=<path>/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sdb1 (sdb1 being my usb device)
when I tried booting from it, I ended up with a black screen with the cursor blinking indefinitely.
What am I doing wrong?

*gparted still shows the usb flash as fat32.

(2013-06-14 08:25)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  Running ls -l /dev/disk/by-id should list the disks recognized on the system. Ignore all the -part files (they represent partitions, not whole disks). Then you do the following to write the image out: dd if=path/to/ipxe.usb of=/dev/disk/by-id/my-usb-stick-name (replace with what you found above in the output from ls -l)

Be careful not to overwrite the wrong device, or you'll need to recover its contents from a backup.