Chained iPXE and ISO via http

[marost]

Hi All,

Just started using/experimenting with iPXE. I have it up and running thansk to the great documentation.

Here is what I used to do. I used to boot via my NICs (Intel E1000) PXE ROM my ISO containing my custom operating system (a hobby of mine).

My ISO contains an MBR, bootloader and kernel. All in one. So far, I used MEMDISK PXELinux to transfer my ISO into memory and kick it off.

Now, I'd like to do the same via iPXE and HTTP. I followed https://gist.github.com/robinsmidsrod/2234639 which is an absolutely great breakdown of all the configurations you can use with iPXE.

I customized mt entry in /var/www/menu.ipxe to contain

item --key c custom Boot from HTTP

:custom
echo Booting Bear from HTTPS for ${initiator-iqn}
sanboot --no-describe http://192.168.0.2/custom_hdd || goto failed
goto start

With wireshark, I have observed the network traffic and it seems that the binary is being requested ("GET custom_hdd") and transferred successfully. However, it does not seem to be kicked off as none of my MBR, Bootloader stuff seems to be executed.

Additionally, I tried:
item --key p pxelinux Boot PXELINUX

:pxelinux
set 210:string tftp://${next-server}/
chain ${210:string}pxelinux.0 || goto failed
goto start

Which seems to work just fine. I guess I am not understanding as to why the binary/image would not have been kicked off? Could somebody clarify this?

I am trying to get away from MEMDISK as I am particularly interested in iPXEs code signing ability.

Thanks for any help!