iPXE detecting NICs from USB, but not from HDD

[robinsmidsrod]

First of all, what kind of network card does your computer have? Name, linux driver and PCI-ID, please. You can find it with lspci -vv, usually.

Second, if you already have compiled ipxe from git, you should make bin/ipxe.usb followed by dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sdX (where X represents the device number of your usb stick, find it with fdisk -l). Be aware that this will completely wipe your USB stick. This USB stick should then be bootable on your computer. If you can boot it, and get into the iPXE shell and issue a dhcp command and you get an IP (ifstat) then your hardware _should_ work. You can always try to chain to the demo image at boot.ipxe.org, as explained on the front page of http://ipxe.org .

At this point you can start experimenting with other ways of starting the iPXE, like chainloading, booting from grub or syslinux, or others.