Netboot and iPXE

[niamu]

I've also been experimenting with alternative methods for booting iPXE on a Mac. Currently, I have only run tests on iMacs with CD drives. CD booting works fine, but as Apple has now killed off the optical drive on their entire product line, it's starting to become necessary to look into other options.

I've made many attempts at booting over USB, including the rEFIt -> Syslinux chainload method. rEFIt boots fine, but booting Syslinux fails with "no bootable device". If a bootable disc is available in the SuperDrive at the time of the failure, it will fall back to that device automatically.

My current theory is that if your Mac is equipped with an internal optical drive (SuperDrive) you can not boot via USB into a legacy (BIOS) environment.

I have seen it mentioned that Boot Camp Assistant will identify whether or not a Mac will boot via USB (http://nonme85851.webs.com/bootcamp.png). I haven't been able to test this myself yet.

The iPXE EFI build is not feature complete yet, so even though it will boot perfectly over USB, there is no support for iSCSI.

Which brings me to the Netboot option. The only EFI software that I've seen so far that can boot a legacy/BIOS environment is rEFIt. I've been waiting for news on an EFI build of Syslinux as that would solve all of the problems, but until that is available, we are stuck with local media.

Of course, a feature complete EFI build of iPXE would also solve these problems, but I imagine that the amount of work to make that happen is incredibly time consuming.

Thanks jpwise for summarizing your experience so far. It's tough to piece together all of the information, so I've tried to add as much as I can. I'm trying new boot methods every day to make some sort of progress. I'll report back with any discoveries.