Trouble with booting to windows

[JerJer]

@george1421 I don’t exactly understand what you mean but these are the settings im using currently

[george1421]

@JerJer OK in your second picture.

Set host bios exit type to SANBOOT

[JerJer]

@george1421 Still goes into refind

[george1421]

@JerJer well lets take a different approach.

From a browser key in the following url, but replace the IP address of your fog server. http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/boot.php?mac=00:00:00:00:00

This is going to print out the fog iPXE menu.

Look down the page after the menu items

item fog.local Boot from hard disk
item fog.memtest Run Memtest86+
item fog.reginput Perform Full Host Registration and Inventory
item fog.reg Quick Registration and Inventory
item fog.deployimage Deploy Image
item fog.multijoin Join Multicast Session
item fog.sysinfo Client System Information (Compatibility)
choose --default fog.local --timeout 5000 target && goto ${target}
:fog.local
sanboot --no-describe --drive 0x80 || goto MENU

For the :fog.local menu item, does it say sanboot like above?

Do the same test but replace the mac address of 00:00:00:00:00 with the mac address of the target computer you are testing with.

[JerJer]

@george1421

same with both macs

[george1421]

@JerJer Well then this is interesting. How is refind even in the picture here? if you search the entire iPXE menu using “find” in the browser is refind even mentioned?

Is the target computer using refind as some kind of boot manager, like in a dual boot configuration (windows and ubuntu)?

[JerJer]

@george1421
Can’t find refind on the page. The pcs only have windows but i have no idea if they have refind installed and how i would go about checking that

EDIT: oh and the no such device or address on every host shouldnt affect this? they still wake up and do all the fog stuff

EDIT2: heading off for the night gonna continue trying to solve this tomorrow if you come up with more ideas and i have time to try them

[george1421]

@JerJer I’m about out of ideas here. refind should not be sent by the fog server if its not in the iPXE menu.

I guess one way to tell if its coming form fog would be to rename refind on the fog server to something else as a test.

In /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory you should find refind.efi. Rename that with mv refind.efi refind.efi.sav Then pxe boot the target computer again. You might see a chain loading error, but that will tell us if refind is coming from FOG.

no such device or address on every host

That depends on where you are seeing this error message.

I think we should see screen shots of the screens you are seeing. Refind as well as error screens to see if we can get the context of the error.

Oh, and I forgot to ask, what version of FOG are you using?

[JerJer]

@george1421 FOG version is 1.5.5

errors in the list all hosts screen.
will send pics of the refind screen in a bit.
Can’t seem to find the file /var/www… FOG was installed for me on the server but i don’t know how… will have to ask if they remember

[george1421]

@JerJer Ah that’s fog’s ping command.

You need:

1. The hosts to be able to be resolved by name by DNS
2. The host have udp port 445 open in the windows firewall.

[JerJer]

@george1421 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/230047235944087563/584074817905360900/JPEG_20190531_204437.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/230047235944087563/584074887589789696/JPEG_20190531_204453.jpg
pictures of the refind screens

[george1421]

@JerJer My initial reaction is that isn’t fog’s refind. I don’t know of a way to confirm, but FOG’s version of refind should be 0.11.0 to 0.11.4.

Wait I have a fog build environment, let me check that version.

[george1421]

@JerJer What version of FOG are you running?

[JerJer]

@george1421 sry hopped off the pc but the version is 1.5.5

[JerJer]

@george1421 did you find anything out about refind?

[george1421]

@JerJer Well… I found in the git hub notes that 0.9.1 was in the build release for quite a while. I have not contacted one of the developers to find out what is currently shipping.

I would then revert to my previous request to temporarily rename refind.efi and then go through the pxe boot process and exit to the hard drive. I have not ever heard of refind being sent to a bios based computer before, especially since its not listed in the iPXE menu. I don’t understand how its getting to the target computer.

[JerJer]

@george1421 ok got the location for fog now and changed the refind name… Now the boot from hard disk just loops back to the menu… Can see some text for redind conf and efi flash… The installation was done in some weird way as the server didnt have straight internet connection… Will prolly try reinstalling tomorrow or monday unless i get instructions for it today

[JerJer]

@george1421 got more info on the pcs… Apparently they do use uefi. I set up bios as instructed but windows seems to be installed in some “bios mode” and will need to be reinstalled

[george1421]

@JerJer said in Trouble with booting to windows:

Apparently they do use uefi

I was thinking about this as I ran my morning trips. The part we were missing in the tests is that iPXE will tell boot.php what type of system it is (32bit vs 64bit) and (bios vs uefi). When we called the boot url those parameters weren’t passed as iPXE would. That is why the tests always came up bios. I was going to have you double check to ensure these systems were uefi because bios based systems could not boot refind.efi only uefi systems should understand that environment.

Ok now we understand the conditions we can focus on the problem. When iPXE exits it calls refind.efi to locate the bootable hard drive.

I have 2 thoughts on this

1. We need to adjust the refind config file to look in more places
2. I’m a bit surprised that the FOG developers switched back to 0.9.1 of refind. That is somewhat old. I know we were doing testing with 0.11.3 and then had to back up to 0.11.0 because of a bug in 0.11.3. I wonder if 0.9.1 supports nvme disks…

[george1421]

@george1421 Looking at the sourceforge page for rEFInd it looks like 0.9.1 was release in Sept 2015 which (if I’m remembering correctly) predates the wide adoption of nvme disks. Understand this is only a suspicion, but I wonder if 0.9.1 can even see nvme disks…

I’m wondering if we grab a current version of refind from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.11.4/ download the zip file and then in the zip file change to /refind-bin-0.11.4/refind/ Extract refind_x64.efi and rename it to refind.efi and move it to /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory on the fog server. Don’t forget to rename the existing refind.efi file before copying the new version of refind there.