Using iPXE on installed on local drive to boot Windows from local drive

[NiKiZe]

(2016-02-15 10:58)FreeMinded Wrote:  What does not work yet is to boot Windows from the second partition of the same local drive. Using
sanboot --no-describe --drive 0x80
Grub loads again and we loop.

--drive 0x80 refers to the first BIOS disk, BIOS can never boot a specific partition, it's up to the disks bootsector code to do that,

(2016-02-15 10:58)FreeMinded Wrote:  Using
exit
ends up in a "No bootable device" error.

exit returns from ipxe and leaves the selection of "next boot device" to iPXEs loader (BIOS in most cases)

(2016-02-15 10:58)FreeMinded Wrote:  Questions:
How can I boot a specific partition from iPXE?

The sanboot hack only allows to boot disks, and not booting partitions.
Simple answer is then you can't boot a specific partition from iPXE.

(2016-02-15 10:58)FreeMinded Wrote:  Is there a better way to accomplish what we are trying to do?

if you want to run the windows setup i suggest you boot it from the network with wimboot, you can still keep the install.wim on local disk if you want to, but load wimboot and boot.wim over the network.

(2016-02-15 10:58)FreeMinded Wrote:  Is there a way to use timeouts in case the server does not answer (clients should then always boot Windows from the local drive)?

You can end ipxe script lines with || command on fail
command on fail in this case can be a goto and then exit gracefully or do the sanboot hack. You can specify a timeout for most types of fetch commands.

Hope it helps somewhat.