ipxe and mboot.c32

[loper.t2h]

(2013-07-24 12:46)robinsmidsrod Wrote:  What does file(1) tell you about all those files you're trying to load with multiboot, are they all normal uncompressed linux initrds, or something else?

Code:

> file b.b00
b.b00: gzip compressed data, was "vmkBoot.ELF32", from Unix, last modified: Wed May  1 04:51:29 2013

> file net_e100.v00
net_e100.v00: gzip compressed data, was "stage.vtar", from Unix, last modified: Thu Aug  2 05:49:08 2012

As you can see, some of these files are gzip files, but some are special vmware-tar format files (mainly drivers).

I followed the thread on http://lists.ipxe.org/pipermail/ipxe-dev...01846.html and http://lists.ipxe.org/pipermail/ipxe-dev...01846.html but with the same results as described there.

Modules are being loaded (httpd logs shows some GETs) but probably not uncompressed. The main file (loaded with kernel option) and ungzipped:

Code:

> file tboot.b00
tboot.b00: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Wed Mar 14 02:16:55 2012, max compression

> file tboot
tboot: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped

Also the mboot.c32 is modified by VMware in some way (comparing to original syslinux's version) to load these files... Only something like this works (with mboot from ESX installation ISO):

Code:

kernel -n mboot.c32 ${url}/mboot.c32
imgargs mboot.c32 -c ${url}/iso-esx-ks.cfg
boot mboot.c32

Tested on ESXi ver 5.1.0U1 (Update 1 @ 2013-05-04-001).