Inside Security (insert)

[draugadrottinn]

Hello Everyone,

At one time, I had a decent setup done - which was lost due to a major server crash (yeah - no backups - I know...#1 rule; always have good backups).

I had iBoot, Linux live environments, Linux Utilities, Storagecraft, Windows installers (not to iscsi - never could get that working - but to local storage), Windows "ERD" images (Utilities), etc. all network bootable and usable on almost any hardware (yes there are always those few systems that - well they just suck).

I had that all running in a PXE environment (not iPXE), and it was something I put together almost a decade ago, which at the time worked great. It's been so long, that I do not recall how I created this.

Now, the one image I "need" to get functioning ASAP is Insert v1.3.6 - which, is a ... "pain" to get running via network boot (PXE). When I first did this, it took me about a week or so to finally succeed. I'm already in this about a week - and still stuck. Insert is based on Knoppix - which should not be this hard to get to network boot. You've got vmlinuz, and miniroot.gz - piece of cake right? Eh, no (insert minion gif here... lol). I can get it to a certain point (boots via image) but when it looks for the cdrom (scans /dev/sd?##) it comes up empty and drops to a limited shell.

Now times have changed (iPXE vs PXE) since I've done this last, and there's more functionality. So, I've been looking at the work and examples here - which are pretty awesome. I've been trying quite a few different approaches to getting Insert up and running - all of which still fail. I would like to get everything running via iPXE, but will not shy away from PXE if it is the only option.

Any assistance/ideas will be much appreciated.

Created ipxelinux.0 file:
make bin/undionly.kpxe EMBED=../../imbedded.ipxe
install -v -m 0644 -g root -o root bin/undionly.kpxe ../../ipxelinux.0

Here is my imbedded.ipxe file:
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#!ipxe
set base-ftp-ip http://ftp.###.###.###.4
set base-http-ip http://###.###.###.4
set base-iscsi-ip ###.###.###.6
set base-nfs-ip ###.###.###.4:
set base-nfs-dir /var/lib/tftpboot/boot_images
set base-url boot_images
set base-iso-dir boot_images/iso
set base-iqn iqn.2017-11.nnnn-iscsitrgt.nnnn.local
set base-iscsi iscsi:${iscsi-server}::::${base-iqn}
set initiator-iqn ${base-iqn}:${mac}

dhcp
chain http://###.###.###.4/menu.ipxe
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Here is my menu.ipxe (the insert boot function), I'm using direct IP addresses just to
alleviate any possible issues with using variables. Once it's functioning, I'll change to
the variables:
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:insert136
echo Booting Insert 1.3.6
sanboot --keep --no-describe --drive 0x81 http://###.###.###.4/boot_images/iso/UTI...-1.3.6.iso || goto failed ##STILL FAILED

## Failed Attempts - or some combination/variation of the following:
#sanboot --keep --no-describe --drive 0x81 http://###.###.###.4/boot_images/iso/UTI...-1.3.6.iso || goto failed

#sanhook --keep --no-describe --drive 0x81 http://###.###.###.4/boot_images/iso/UTI...-1.3.6.iso || goto failed
#sanboot

## Also tried below kernel entries with http://###.###.###.4/boot_images/insert1.3.6/vmlinuz

#KERNEL boot_images/insert1.3.6/vmlinuz
#APPEND nfsdir=###.###.###.4:/var/lib/tftpboot/boot_images/insert1.3.6/cdrom/ nodhcp lang=en ramdisk=1000000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off nomce vga=normal
#initrd insert1.3.6/miniroot.gz

#KERNEL boot_images/insert1.3.6/vmlinuz
#append nfsdir=###.###.###.4:/var/lib/tftpboot/boot_images/insert1.3.6/cdrom nodhcp lnag=en ramdisk_size=1000000 init=/etc/init apm=power-off nomce vga=normal initrd=insert1.3.6/miniroot.gz BOOT_IMAGE=insert
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