chain menu.c32

[erwan.l]

Hi,

chain menu.c32 menu.cfg works with syslinux 3.x but not with higher versions.

Is the comboot compatibility broken between syslinux and ipxe ?

Regards,
Erwan

[robinsmidsrod]

Yes, syslinux comboot modules from (and including) version 4 and up is not compatible with iPXE. You'll have to stick with the ones from syslinux 3.86, which I believe are the latest that work. You also need to enable the COMBOOT support, as it is by default not compiled in. Alternatively you can use pxelinux.0 from any later version of syslinux and let it load menu.c32, which should work without issues.

[erwan.l]

Hi robinsmidsrod,

Thanks for your answer.
menu.c32 from 3.86 works indeed.
Also I do indeed enable comboot support before compiling.

For the record, chainloading pxelinux 6.01 from ipxe no longer works either

Regards,
Erwan

[robinsmidsrod]

I've sent a brief message asking the pxelinux author for feedback on the pxelinux 6.xx chainloading issue. Hopefully I have more to report later (or he will reply here directly).

[robinsmidsrod]

The answer I got from HPA was "no idea... don't understand why that would be, unless the issue is that pxelinux.0 can't find ldlinux.c32 afterwards", which makes me believe that the newer pxelinux might have some issue with the calculated path prefix, or ldlinux.c32 is not available. Do you have ldlinux.c32 in the right location for pxelinux.0 to find it?

[erwan.l]

Here below my folder structure :

I can boot straight to pxelinux without any issues.
If I chainload pxelinux.0 from ipxe : pxelinux loads and freezes before it gets a change to load the menu.

-root
--ldlinux.c32
--libutil.c32
--menu.c32
--pxelinux.0
--pxelinux.cfg
---default

Here below my ipxe script which works with previous versions (4.x)

:pxelinux
dhcp net0
#set 210:string tftp://${next-server}/ -> does not work either
set 210:string tftp://${dhcp-server}/
chain ${210:string}pxelinux.0 || goto failed
goto start

[robinsmidsrod]

That looks about right, from what I can understand. I think this must be debugged by some more knowledgeable guys. I would suggest you ask the syslinux developers for debugging assistance. My guess is that you'll need to build pxelinux with some form of debugging enabled to figure where the issue is.