Issues with Gparted PXE Booting

[quinniedid]

I have been trying to get Gparted to work from FOG for the past week. I feel like there is something that I am simply missing.

I can get Gparted to boot but when it boots it is giving me this error:

Am I missing a config file or something? It seems that it is not finding any drives? I know that Gparted works because if I plug the USB with the exact same live image it works no problem on the device.

Here is what I have defined for my PXE menu settings:

kernel http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/vmlinuz initrd http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/initrd.img boot=live config components union=overlay username=user noswap noeject ip= vga=788 fetch=http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
boot

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Sebastian Roth]

@quinniedid Probably a good idea to post your iPXE menu Parameters as text as well so people can give it a try straight away and see what’s wrong.

[quinniedid]

@Sebastian-Roth Great point! It has been added.

[Sebastian Roth]

@quinniedid Whoops, just saw that we’ve lost track of this. Did you ever solve this. Might give it a try in the next days when I find the time.

[quinniedid]

@Sebastian-Roth It has not been resolved.

[Sebastian Roth]

@quinniedid Do you mind sharing how you got this working? Others might find it helpful too.

[quinniedid]

@Sebastian-Roth I did not get it working. I have tried some different things but it fails to load.

[george1421]

@quinniedid There should be an image fetch command that you need for the initrd.

While its a bit off target here is the commands needed to pxe boot into ubuntu

:os.Ubuntu1604
kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/ubuntu/16.04/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/ubuntu/16.04/initrd.gz
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/nfs netboot=nfs nfsroot=${fog-ip}:/images/os/ubuntu/16.04/ locale=en_US.UTF-8 ip=dhcp rw

[george1421]

@george1421 So to translate what you have.

kernel http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/vmlinuz initrd http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/initrd.img boot=live config components union=overlay username=user noswap noeject ip= vga=788 fetch=http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
boot

Into iPXE syntax

kernel http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/vmlinuz 
initrd http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/initrd.img
imgargs  initrd=initrd.img boot=live config components union=overlay username=user noswap noeject vga=788 fetch=http://${fog-ip}/fog/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
boot

Also I would strongly suggest that you NOT use the path http://${fog-ip}/fog because of the url rewriting rules that fog does with apache. If you had to use http I would put it in directory off the web root directory and not under /fog.

[quinniedid]

@george1421

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/vmlinuz 
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/initrd.img
imgargs  initrd=initrd.img boot=live config components union=overlay username=user noswap noeject vga=788 fetch=tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
boot

I see the files download but this is the screen that I get:

[george1421]

@quinniedid Well if this was FOS linux (FOG) the error at this point was that the kernel

1. Doesn’t understand the format of virtual hard drive (initrd.img)
2. The initrd file didn’t make it to the target computer
3. You were pxe booting a 64bit kernel and have a 32 bit initrd file.
4. The kernel is mismatched to the initrd file

Since its erroring out just as it connects to the initrd file, I don’t think the issue is related to the fetch command later in the kernel parameters.

edit: Looking at the gparted pxe booting page, the issue “might” be the fetch command since it may only reference http.

[george1421]

Looking at the sysconfig file inside the current gparted zip file this is the syslinux kernel boot parameters.

  kernel /live/vmlinuz
  append initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live union=overlay username=user config components quiet noswap  toram=filesystem.squashfs ip= net.ifnames=0  nosplash 

Note there is no fetch command.

That would be translated into this (guess)

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/initrd.img
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/filesystem.squashfs

imgargs  initrd=initrd.img boot=live union=overlay username=user config components quiet noswap  toram=filesystem.squashfs ip= net.ifnames=0  nosplash 

Will it work, <??>.

[quinniedid]

@george1421 This is what I am getting now:

[Sebastian Roth]

@quinniedid said in Issues with Gparted PXE Booting:

It has not been resolved.

Sorry, I got that completely wrong. Shouldn’t try to answer in a rush.

[george1421]

@quinniedid Strange, the files appear to download but then ipxe blew up on the imgargs command and then didn’t try to boot. Are you sure the ipxe menu doesn’t have any extra stuff in it? or like you missed the imgargs command?

[quinniedid]

@george1421 This is what I have configured:

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/initrd.img
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
imgargs initrd=initrd.img boot=live union=overlay username=user config components quiet noswap toram=filesystem.squashfs ip= net.ifnames=0 nosplash

[Tom Elliott]

Move the components of imgargs to the kernel line after vmlinuz

Remove imgargs line

[george1421]

Ok I have a working solution here

Using gparted-live-0.33.0-2-i686.zip as the base file being used

This is the parameters settings:

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/initrd.img
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img boot=live config components union=overlay username=user noswap noeject ip= vga=788 fetch=tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
boot || goto MENU

ref: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images/18

[quinniedid]

@george1421 I got a lot closer! But I am now getting a failed to boot…

@Tom-Elliott Also tried these:

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/vmlinuz vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img boot=live config components union=overlay username=user noswap noeject ip= vga=788 fetch=tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/initrd.img
boot

This seemed to get further

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img boot=live union=overlay username=user config components quiet noswap toram=filesystem.squashfs ip= net.ifnames=0 nosplash
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/initrd.img
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/gparted/filesystem.squashfs
boot

[george1421]

@quinniedid My instructions worked on my system using the i686 gparted kernel. I didn’t try the amd64 kernel.

In both of the pictures I was there during testing. The VM I used for testing was a bios based system. I did not try with a uefi based VM.

In your second picture I also go that during testing when I moved the kernel arguments to the kernel line in the iPXE code. When I put them back is when it started working once I stopped copying the squashfs via initrd and used the fetch kernel parameter.