Posts made by nexx34

@george1421
I guess it was a dumb question.
I heard of things like “serva” (though I couldn’t even test them due to the horrible degree of trial-ware-ness the have) where you just put an iso in a directory. But I already understand that there are so many different isos and there is just no standard to them that it is impossible to have it universal. Maybe it’d be cool to have some sort of auto support for the most widespread things people want to PXE boot, but all it really hangs on for me is being able to properly follow instructions, as the wiki is already all that is needed. :^)
I don’t want to spam this thread with off-topic questions. Again, thank you. Awesome that it works now, I understand that there is a balance between simplicity and flexibility, I was just wondering a little.

Have a great day.

@george1421
Yes, I will take this to heart, next time I have a problem in the future I will post shots right off the bat.
And you are right, it is amazing what can be done with the project.
Is it ever planned to make pxe booting “easier”?
(Just asking for curiousity now, I read in another post, maybe it was even by you, that it is very much not desired to have something else other than the imaging aspect be developed to a major degree where it could detract from the former.)

@george1421
Oh god, that was it.
Thanks for your unbelievable patience, I hope you aren’t mad at me now.
The installer is booting. THANKS
You woudln’t believe how happy I am right now.
https://ibb.co/s3bV9PW
Now I just need to set up all the other images, what coud possibly go wrong? :^)
Again, thank you very much, @george1421 for your amazing help, and you too, @Sebastian-Roth .

@george1421

Menu Item
os.esxi67u2

Description
ESXI 6.7u2

Parameters
kernel nfs://$192.168.1.16:/images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/bootx64.efi -c nfs://$192.168.1.16:/images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/boot.cfg
boot || goto MENU

Menu Show with
Alll Hosts

Thanks very much for your fast reply!

@george1421
I have now tested this all on a more recent motherboard that is three years old.
It worked in bringing me to the fog menu while having “uefi only” set for the LAN Boot option. Success!
However, it still gives me that good old http://ipxe.org/err/3e11616e error code which redirects to http://ipxe.org/err/3e1161.
This can be seen on my screenshot below:
Booting…
https://ibb.co/vk99pVH
Cleintmenu:
https://ibb.co/y5mqhzt
The infamous error:
https://ibb.co/MMsCKZ4

@Sebastian-Roth
I linked the screenshots above, the dns address (my router) I get with <s> and <show dns> is correct by the way.

@nexx34 @george1421 Well, I am testing a different computer now, it is a desktop this time, and it has gotten past the “Can’t get NBP” stage, what is making me wonder now is that afterfirst loading default.ipxe via tftp and the others (boot.php and bg.png) via http it all stops and nothing happens anymore, it just stays there.

@george1421 Okay, I will have to get such a PC real quick, looks like lenovo FW is shoddy all the way, because I was sure to enable the uefi option in the uefi menu.

@george1421 Yes, it tells me what it had already told be before when I tried this, “NBP is too big to fit in free base memory”.
I would take this is a client issue, but seeing how I had something along those lines in testing with a VM too, I really am clueless as to why it is happening…I mean, the machine I am testing now is halfway modern, it is a more recent lenovo.

@nexx34 Sorry for being a little bit spammy, for me the suspicion is mounting, that when I boot into fog, the client will not boot with uefi and instead takes the CSM regardless of the option being there in pfsense for the uefi files to load.

@george1421 Okay, I will do that, let us see if it will accept booting fog with uefi enabled and the undionly crutch removed >:)

@george1421 Nope, I followed them exactly, I think the problem really lies at the entries about undionly/ipxe.efi/etc in the pfsense dhcp settings, as when using legacy boot it works (but fails to load the esxi image, as that is efi) but that is just what I am guessing right now.

@Sebastian-Roth Thanks, then it’ll be:
Default: undionly.kpxe
uefi32: i386-efi/ipxe.efi
uefi64: ipxe.efi
The weird thing is, that with this even a VM that is set to uefi boot will not work.
It had 386MiB ram, was that too little?
In fact, my T420 that is confirmed to be uefi, will not boot PXE FOG when I set it to boot uefi exclusively.
I am pretty sure it is 64bit, but I can’t find for sure.
I’ll play around a bit with the entries in pfsense and report back in a bit.

@george1421 I have removed the curly brackets, I only modified the boot.cfg in the /images/os/esxi/6.7u2/efi/boot/boot.cfg path, but I don’t think the other one matters since the only one being called is the one I modified. Thanks very much for the new instructions, maybe I just have to use tftp for this stuff.
By the way, you may have forgone replacing your IP with {fog-ip} in the section where you give the contents to be added to the “prefix=” line in the boot.cfg.

Thanks for all your effort, I must be doing something dumb for it to not work, maybe there’s something with my computer I am using to test? It is pretty a old uefi…(though that shouldn’t be the catch).

@Sebastian-Roth
Thanks for clarifying that!
I also tried using a VM to boot with ESXI over PXE, but it didn’t change anything.
So I will now have my config like this?
Default: undionly.kpxe
uefi32: ipxe.efi
uefi64: ipxe.efi

At any rate; it is amazing how supportive you all are! Thanks.

@george1421
I am guessing the machine used the CSM module to boot BIOS instead of uefi when I was using undionly.kpxe, but even if I use ipxe.efi or ipxe.kpxe or ipxe.kkpxe in place of it I am still getting that same old error.
Sorry, I have the feeling it is going to be something basic I missed.
I have three option about what to send in the pfsense:
Default BIOS:
UEFI64:
UEFI32:
However the system only seems to react to the first default option, as when I leave that blank and put the corresponding option into the second and third options, I get nothing, it fails to pxe boot.

@george1421

It is uefi. (It’s a T420 Thinkpad TP00015A)

@george1421 Thanks for the pointer.
I followed your instruction.
( https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images/16 )
Sadly I am getting iPXE error 3e11613b (it doesn’t find the file I guess?) for bootx64.efi (and probably for boot.cfg, too).
I have validated that my parameters in the WebUI entry are correct (I have os.esxi67u2 in the “Menu Item” option) and have otherwise done my best to make sure I am not doing anything incorrectly.

A detail that may be important is the fact that the dhcp is being managed by a pfsense firewall, I have set undionly.kpxe in there as I should have. Entering the ipxe shell by pressing “s” and then typing “show dns” returns what I expected, 192.168.1.1 as it is.

I am sorry (especially if it is a noob mistake) that I have to ask again, and I can fully understand if you don’t have time to answer, I would be very thankful though. I will try the tftp option at the bottom of the instructions now, but I would prefer nfs.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

Okay, sorry for being a nuisance, the directory picking works as follows:
“https://{next-server}”
automatically goes to
“/var/www/html”
in my case, then the correct thing to append to this would have been:
“/fog/isoimages/esxi67”

I left out the “fog”, sorry, but maybe this helps someone else that is also new to the project.
However, I am not much closer to my solution, as all I get now is a black screen and a blinking cursor.

Hello fogproject community!

The goal is to be able to PXE boot into the ESXI installer, and I have taken a liking to fogproject, also due to its open source nature, I really want to make it work. All I have found on the topic is an old post about ESXI 5.5 but that was not of much help as it seems that the contents of the iso have changed and I do not know what files are needed for it to boot or how to modify the boot.cfg in the root directory. I have extracted the iso image of the installer at /var/www/html/fog/isoimages/esxi67 and it tells me it cannot find the required files from my parameters here:

Menu Item
esxi.BOOT

Description
ESXI 6.7

Parameters
kernel -n mboot.c32 http://${next-server}/isoimages/esxi67/mboot.c32
imgargs mboot.c32 -c http://${next-server}/isoimages/esxi67/boot.cfg
boot