wimboot and IIS

[steve6375]

Hi
I apologise if this has already been covered but..

I have ipxe.iso on a USB drive which I can boot to and then hit ctrl.b to get to the console. I then want to boot a wim file using wimboot from my Win7 64-bit system with IIS 7.5. I am using a domestic ADSL router for DHCP.

The problem is that whether I use boot.ipxe (do I use a boot command or a chain command?) or type the commands from boot.ipxe in manually, nothing seems to happen after the boot command. I have tried a VM and a real system.

The documentation seems lacking in this respect - it says at http://ipxe.org/wimboot

Quote:Boot using iPXE from the URL of your iPXE script, e.g. http://my.web.server/win7/boot.ipxe. You should see iPXE download your Windows boot files via HTTP and boot into the Windows installer:

But no clue as to how to boot or what commands to use???
any help appreciated.

[robinsmidsrod]

Your problem is that bootmgr instead of wimboot is set as SELECTED. That means that "boot" without parameters will try to run the file "bootmgr", but what you'd want to run is "wimboot".

You'll need to do "boot wimboot" (without quotes) to actually boot wimboot, and not bootmgr. You could also avoid bootmgr being SELECTED by loading it with "initrd" instead of "kernel" command.

You might also want to read up on some network booting fundamentals at http://networkboot.org/.

[steve6375]

Thanks for reply. still no go.
I can't understand why
kernel http://my.web.server/win7/wimboot says ...OK
but so does
kernel http://my.web.server/win7/xxx says ...OK but it does not exist!

[robinsmidsrod]

What does the DNS name "my.web.server" actually resolve to? You are aware that is just a placeholder for your actual web server? Looking at your screenshot might seem like there is a misunderstanding of some fundamentals. You might also be interested in this YouTube video that shows how to do things without using iPXE. You might find some understanding there. Though I would recommend you use wimboot instead of his convoluted Windows WDS/PXE solution (the part that involves startrom.0, pxeboot.n12 and such).

You might want to run the command "imgstat" to see if those files have actually been downloaded. They should all have non-zero sizes, and you can verify that they actually return what they should by typing that URL into your web browser. If it returns an error page then you have your problem.

[Sedorox]

(2013-04-02 13:38)steve6375 Wrote:  Hi
I apologise if this has already been covered but..

I have ipxe.iso on a USB drive which I can boot to and then hit ctrl.b to get to the console. I then want to boot a wim file using wimboot from my Win7 64-bit system with IIS 7.5. I am using a domestic ADSL router for DHCP.

The problem is that whether I use boot.ipxe (do I use a boot command or a chain command?) or type the commands from boot.ipxe in manually, nothing seems to happen after the boot command. I have tried a VM and a real system.

The documentation seems lacking in this respect - it says at http://ipxe.org/wimboot

Quote:Boot using iPXE from the URL of your iPXE script, e.g. http://my.web.server/win7/boot.ipxe. You should see iPXE download your Windows boot files via HTTP and boot into the Windows installer:

But no clue as to how to boot or what commands to use???
any help appreciated.

I think it may be a combination of what Robin mentioned, where the my.web.server, is actually just a placeholder for your real web server (probably on 10.0.2.4, from what it seems like via your screencapture).
Could also be that the permissions of the files on the webserver are off too, not allowing the download.

I do know, from the screenshot you attached, it isn't grabbing the right files.
Here is a screenshot of loading it on my server (note I did have a misstype in the middle), but you can see the proper size of things (granted, boot.wim will vary).
   

[Kirioss]

Hi,

You should test all your URL from a web browser on an installed machine, just to be sure you don't actually download an IIS error page instead of the files you're looking for. For example, be careful about mime types that IIS allows by default on your web server and authentication.

Nicolas