Issues with Gparted PXE Booting

[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.

[quinniedid]

@george1421 What I find interesting is that I can now get Clonezilla to work on the UEFI VM but NOT on a physical box…
You would think that Gparted an Clonezilla would be somewhat the same.

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

[Sebastian Roth]

@quinniedid Did you ever get to check what’s in /boot.log as suggested in the pictures?

[quinniedid]

@Sebastian-Roth The boot log is reporting a bad address to the FQDN of our server. Which is strange as within the same command-line I can nslookup the FQDN and get back the associated IP. I can ping the IP address but I cannot ping with the FQDN. Giving me the same error as bad address.

[Sebastian Roth]

@quinniedid That definitely is strange. Can you check /etc/nsswitch.conf when you get to the shell? Please post its contents here.

[quinniedid]

@Sebastian-Roth I did find that it works with an IP address in the fetch portion of the commands.

hosts: files dns

[george1421]

@quinniedid I guess what version of gparted are you using. Are you using the same one I did? Did you try it in a bios based VM. There as to be something different between your setup and mine. If you look at your clonezilla setup, that mirrors pretty much the gparted setup. So one might think your gparted files are not right if all things are equal.