Not a Fog problem, but solution ?

Cire3

I’m thinking this shouldn’t be difficult issue to address. Some of the people here are off the charts smart. Before I go screwing up fog that has been amazing from the very first version (No joke as I have imaged 1000’s of PC’s over the years)

Ok, to the point. I have network boot from PFSense to fog as next server. And Fog set to boot to the menu, and if you do nothing after a few seconds… It boots to the local drive as normal. In case anyone boots to it by mistake, or for some crazy reason network is set to first boot device.

I would also like to run a netboot.xyz server. What would I change, or where do I change boot to local drive… To boot to next pxe server ?

I see some similar setups, but not exact how I would like it to act.

As always, thanks in advance ! Fog has been a rock solid beast !

george1421

@Cire3 In general what you ask is possible. It will take a little setup to complete, but possible.

What you need to know

FOG has the ability to create custom FOG iPXE menu items. You will want to create a fog ipxe menu to chain to your netboot.xyz server. So you will want to build this menu first and manually select the netboot server to confirm it works (more on that in a bit)
If you want to manually select this menu item then you are done. If you want to default to this menu item instead of booting the local hard drive then go to the next step.
You can change in the fog ipxe menu builder what menu item you want to execute if you don’t select a menu item. Just change the default menu item to your netboot.xyz iPXE menu.

I have a tutorial on how to netboot installer disks so the concept of creating IPXE menu items. If you read over it you will see how to netboot alternate operating systems. https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images

Look at this post: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/15984/integrate-fog-with-wds-mdt/11?_=1702084351302 if you need to chain to another boot loader than this will help. Specifically this section of the code.

set next-server 0.0.0.0 # Replace with WDS server IP address
...
set net0.dhcp/filename ${wds-bootfile}
set proxydhcp/filename ${wds-bootfile}
chain ${wds-bootfile} || goto Menu

You see how to populate the dhcp next server and bootfile so that the chained bootloader will think it was pxe booted natively. The other thing this ipxe menu shows you how to dynamically change the bootloader based on bios or uefi.

Cire3

You sir rock ! I’ll give it a read, thanks !

Right after I win my battle of Carbon X1 Gen 7 just returns to boot menu after Downloading NBP file.

These Carbons are the worst…

george1421

@Cire3 said in Not a Fog problem, but solution ?:

Carbon X1 Gen 7 just returns to boot menu after Downloading NBP file

Check secure boot is off and if the proper boot loader is being sent to the target computer.

You might use a witness computer on same subnet as the pxe booting computer. Use a capture mask of port 67 or port 68 or display filter of bootp Start the capture, pxe boot to error and then stop the capture. You will see the DORA process (discover, offer, request, ack/nack). Look at the offer packet this is coming from the dhcp server to the target computer. Look to see if both the ethernet header (bootp part) has next-server of IP address of fog server and boot-file as the proper boot loader name. Now confirm that dhcp options 66 and 67 are set properly. Its up to the pxe boot firmware vendor to decide to use bootp fields or dhcp option fields to locate the boot information. If you grab the pcap I can look at it for you if you get lost or not sure.

Not a Fog problem, but solution ?

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