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PXE Boot Menu with iSCSI and AOE!
Tomaz.Kavcic at infohit
Feb 3, 2008, 9:47 AM
Post #1 of 5 (12092 views)
Permalink
Dear developer,

I am working on a project for my graduate work (diploma), which includes iSCSI and AOE booting. I made some menus using pxelinux and things are working fine with linux, but I have a small problem with windows system which require direct iscsi or aoe access.
I have dhcpd.conf setup that it to each first dhcp request handles out pxelinux.0, then I can chooose from that menu which OS to load. If I choose linux, there's no problem cause each time I can use predefined initrd and kernel which can be both defined directly to pxelinux. The problem appears when I try to access a iscsi or aoe partition directly using gPXE. I can setup pxelinux menu to handle undionly.kpxe (undionly.0) to the client and I also have a string in dhcpd.conf with "option root-path" which is fixed. The problem is with this method I can only setup ONE fided root-path to each client which can't be changed during startup. So if I have root-path defined to boot win2k3 using iscsi, I can only run that OS on that single client. If I want to run another OS on that same client, then I have to edit dhcpd.conf, replace the root-path and restart dhcpd server. After that I can start the client from pxelinux boot menu and new root-path.
So, my question is, how, if possible, can I solve this problem?

I'd like to have it like that:


PXELINUX PXE BOOT MENU with:

- Microsoft Windows 2k3 (pxelinux.0 -> undionly.0)
filename="";
option root-path "iscsi:192.168.1.100::::iqn.2008.fedora:target";

- Microsoft Windows XP (pxelinux.0 -> aoe.0)
filename="aoe.0";
option root-path "aoe:e0.0";

- Fedora Linux 8 (pxelinux.0 -> vmlinuz, initrd.img)


I was trying to do it myself, but I practically run out of ideas. The only thing I can think of is to make a web-based menu, where can each user with his username configure which operating system to boot at next restart. The script would change the contents of dhcpd.conf (root-path) and restart the dhcp server. But this is not a nice solution of course.

However, if you can in any way help me to reslove this situation, I would highly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance, Tomaz Kavcic (Slovenia).

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Re: PXE Boot Menu with iSCSI and AOE! [ In reply to ]
hpa at zytor
Feb 3, 2008, 7:10 PM
Post #2 of 5 (11825 views)
Permalink
Tomaž Kavcic wrote:
> Dear developer,
>
> I am working on a project for my graduate work (diploma), which includes iSCSI and AOE booting. I made some menus using pxelinux and things are working fine with linux, but I have a small problem with windows system which require direct iscsi or aoe access.
> I have dhcpd.conf setup that it to each first dhcp request handles out pxelinux.0, then I can chooose from that menu which OS to load. If I choose linux, there's no problem cause each time I can use predefined initrd and kernel which can be both defined directly to pxelinux. The problem appears when I try to access a iscsi or aoe partition directly using gPXE. I can setup pxelinux menu to handle undionly.kpxe (undionly.0) to the client and I also have a string in dhcpd.conf with "option root-path" which is fixed. The problem is with this method I can only setup ONE fided root-path to each client which can't be changed during startup. So if I have root-path defined to boot win2k3 using iscsi, I can only run that OS on that single client. If I want to run another OS on that same client, then I have to edit dhcpd.conf, replace the root-path and restart dhcpd server. After that I can start the client from pxelinux boot menu and new root-path.
> So, my question is, how, if possible, can I solve this problem?
>

We have some ideas for pretty sophisticated integration between gPXE and
PXELINUX, however, this is currently stalled due to problems with
undionly.kpxe in the current gPXE tree (which look like memory
corruption to me.)

The best thing anyone could do to help this move forward would be to
help debug these problems. Once those are there, we should be able to
put in the additional gPXE/PXELINUX interfaces easily enough.

-hpa

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PXE Boot Menu with iSCSI and AOE! [ In reply to ]
Tomaz.Kavcic at infohit
Feb 4, 2008, 12:12 PM
Post #3 of 5 (11831 views)
Permalink
Hello,

gPXE works OK for me when chainloading Pxelinux.0 -> gPXE. The only thing missing for me currently is that dhcpd.conf is limited to only one "option root-path", where I would need more than one if I want to make a menu with different operating system who use aoe, iscsi, and similar root paths. Therefore, I'd like to ask you, if it's maybe possible to somehow change the code of pxelinux (or gpxe) to get the "option root-path" directly from pxelinux.cfg/default script or is there maybe an option to compile undionly.kpxe with already integrated static root-path. last case would mean I have to compile many different undionly.kpxe modules, but that's OK if this is an only option.
However, any solution would be great!

Thanks again, Tomaz.


We have some ideas for pretty sophisticated integration between gPXE and
PXELINUX, however, this is currently stalled due to problems with
undionly.kpxe in the current gPXE tree (which look like memory
corruption to me.)

The best thing anyone could do to help this move forward would be to
help debug these problems. Once those are there, we should be able to
put in the additional gPXE/PXELINUX interfaces easily enough.

-hpa

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PXE Boot Menu with iSCSI and AOE! [ In reply to ]
Tomaz.Kavcic at infohit
Feb 4, 2008, 12:13 PM
Post #4 of 5 (11823 views)
Permalink
Hello,

gPXE works OK for me when chainloading Pxelinux.0 -> gPXE. The only thing missing for me currently is that dhcpd.conf is limited to only one "option root-path", where I would need more than one if I want to make a menu with different operating system who use aoe, iscsi, and similar root paths. Therefore, I'd like to ask you, if it's maybe possible to somehow change the code of pxelinux (or gpxe) to get the "option root-path" directly from pxelinux.cfg/default script or is there maybe an option to compile undionly.kpxe with already integrated static root-path. last case would mean I have to compile many different undionly.kpxe modules, but that's OK if this is an only option.
However, any solution would be great!

Thanks again, Tomaz.

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Re: PXE Boot Menu with iSCSI and AOE! [ In reply to ]
hpa at zytor
Feb 4, 2008, 1:13 PM
Post #5 of 5 (11824 views)
Permalink
Tomaž Kavcic wrote:
> Hello,
>
> gPXE works OK for me when chainloading Pxelinux.0 -> gPXE. The only thing missing for me currently is that dhcpd.conf is limited to only one "option root-path", where I would need more than one if I want to make a menu with different operating system who use aoe, iscsi, and similar root paths. Therefore, I'd like to ask you, if it's maybe possible to somehow change the code of pxelinux (or gpxe) to get the "option root-path" directly from pxelinux.cfg/default script or is there maybe an option to compile undionly.kpxe with already integrated static root-path. last case would mean I have to compile many different undionly.kpxe modules, but that's OK if this is an only option.
> However, any solution would be great!
>
> Thanks again, Tomaz.
>

That's a pretty major change you're asking for; it fits well in with the
other PXELINUX/gPXE integration we want to do, so it makes sense to do
it the right way rather than hack around it.

-hpa

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