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    Getting FOS on a bootable ISO image

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    • S
      Sebastian Roth Moderator
      last edited by

      @mechalas First question that arises in this context is: UEFI or legacy BIOS boot?

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      • M
        mechalas @Sebastian Roth
        last edited by

        @sebastian-roth UEFI boot

        george1421G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • S
          Sebastian Roth Moderator
          last edited by

          This post is deleted!
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          • S
            Sebastian Roth Moderator
            last edited by Sebastian Roth

            @mechalas Just figured that iPXE can build an ISO for UEFI just as well as for legacy BIOS systems.

            So following our wiki entry on iPXE compilation and using this build command should be all you need to do:

            UEFI: make bin-x86_64-efi/ipxe.iso EMBED=ipxescript
            legacy BIOS: make bin/ipxe.iso EMBED=ipxescript (though not in the same source directory as it needs different headers - carefully read the wiki!)

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            • M
              mechalas @Sebastian Roth
              last edited by

              @sebastian-roth I will give this a shot. Thank you!

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              • M
                mechalas @Sebastian Roth
                last edited by mechalas

                So these instructions build iPXE, and I presume the idea is to chain load the FOG image from the server?

                I am not sure if that will help me. What I really need is to be able to boot FOS directly from an iso. I am leery of involving PXE in the process at all.

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                • george1421G
                  george1421 Moderator @mechalas
                  last edited by

                  @mechalas said in Getting FOS on a bootable ISO image:

                  @sebastian-roth UEFI boot

                  UEFI is pretty simple to boot. I have a few tutorial depending on where you want to jump into the process.

                  I think the simpliest one for uefi is this: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6350/usb-boot-uefi-client-into-fog-menu-easy-way

                  If you want to boot right into fos linux with some of the limitations of the process: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7727/building-usb-booting-fos-image

                  Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

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                  • S
                    Sebastian Roth Moderator
                    last edited by

                    @mechalas said in Getting FOS on a bootable ISO image:

                    So these instructions build iPXE, and I presume the idea is to chain load the FOG image from the server?
                    I am not sure if that will help me. What I really need is to be able to boot FOS directly from an iso. I am leery of involving PXE in the process at all.

                    Yes and no. While loading iPXE from the ISO is skipping some major part of PXE booting it would still need the DHCP server to hand out PXE information (at least option 66 - next server) for iPXE to be able to pull the next file via TFTP.

                    Well then it’s going to be the more complicated way of building an ISO with GRUB and FOS kernel&init. Will provide further information on that soon.

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                    • M
                      mechalas @Sebastian Roth
                      last edited by

                      @sebastian-roth I did give this a shot on one of our problem systems. It had a 25% success rate, meaning it took four tries before it worked. The first three tries, it hung at “iPXE Initializing devices” and had to be power-cycled (which, thankfully, I can do remotely). The fourth time it worked, which is the first time this system has ever successfully PXE booted.

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                      • S
                        Sebastian Roth Moderator
                        last edited by Sebastian Roth

                        @mechalas After playing with this stuff for a bit I came up with two different ways to create an UEFI bootable FOS ISO.

                        Using grub-mkrescue:
                        Hint: For this to work you need an UEFI based 64 bit Linux system that you can use to create the ISO. If you try this on a BIOS machine or 32 bit system it will still build the ISO for you but it might not boot on 64 bit UEFI systems.

                        sudo -i
apt install grub-efi-amd64-bin mtools xorriso mkisofs
mkdir -p iso/boot/grub
cp /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage iso/boot/
cp /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz iso/boot/
vi iso/boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-mkrescue -o fos-x86_64-efi.iso iso/

                        Insert whatever grub.cfg you want. For example use the one @george1421 posted in his tutorial on USB booting. Be aware that you definitely need to use the kernel parameter boottype=usb to make it pull the parameters that iPXE would receive and pass on through the dynamic boot instructions generated.

                        Using grub-mkstandalone and xorriso manually:

                        sudo -i
apt install grub-efi-amd64-bin mtools xorriso mkisofs
mkdir -p iso/boot/grub/
mkdir -p iso/EFI/BOOT/
cp /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage iso/boot/
cp /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/init.xz iso/boot/
vi iso/boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-mkstandalone -o iso/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI -O x86_64-efi "boot/grub/grub.cfg=iso/boot/grub/grub.cfg"
dd if=/dev/zero of=iso/EFI/BOOT/efiboot.img bs=1M count=10
mkfs.msdos -F 12 -n 'EFIBOOTISO' iso/EFI/BOOT/efiboot.img
mmd -i iso/EFI/BOOT/efiboot.img ::EFI
mmd -i iso/EFI/BOOT/efiboot.img ::EFI/BOOT
mcopy -i iso/EFI/BOOT/efiboot.img iso/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI ::EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
cd iso
xorriso -as mkisofs -V 'FOGPROJECT' -e EFI/BOOT/efiboot.img -no-emul-boot -o ../fos-x86_64-efi.iso .

                        Same here, use the grub.cfg file George provided in his tutorial. But you need to add those two lines at the start for George’s config example to work in this setup:

                        set root=(cd0)
set prefix=(memdisk)/boot/grub

                        Every time you change the contents of grub.cfg you need to run all the commands starting from grub-mkstandalone again.

                        Resouces used:
                        https://willhaley.com/blog/custom-debian-live-environment-grub-only/
                        https://github.com/syzdek/efibootiso
                        https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/tools/mkimage-iso-efi/make-efi
                        https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/611846

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                        • M
                          mechalas @Sebastian Roth
                          last edited by mechalas

                          @sebastian-roth Thank you! This looks promising. I will give it a shot on Monday.

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                          • M
                            mechalas @Sebastian Roth
                            last edited by

                            @sebastian-roth I used the grub-mkrescue method and it worked on the first attempt! This is very encouraging, and I am going to ask our lab tech to try this on the other problem systems.

                            I cannot thank you enough for your help.

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                            • S
                              Sebastian Roth Moderator
                              last edited by

                              @mechalas You are welcome.

                              From what I have seen in the verbose output of grub-mkrescue (just add -v as command line option) the ISO created might even boot on legacy BIOS systems as well. Not exactly sure though.

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                              • M
                                mechalas @Sebastian Roth
                                last edited by

                                @sebastian-roth as you suspected, this ISO image did boot both legacy and EFI. Which has been a boon.

                                I have used this ISO four times this week, and it has been a huge time-saver.

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