[ipxe-devel] [gPXE] gPXE in uEFI environments

[Michael Brown]

On Sunday 11 Dec 2011 10:58:42 Gene Cumm wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 02:49,  <Muralidhar.Appalla at emulex.com> wrote:
> > I would like to know whether gPXE has support for network boot and iSCSI
> > boot in uEFI environments. If yes, could someone help me in getting the
> > documentation for same?
> 
> I'm assuming that you're talking loading only EFI-compatible payloads.
>  'make bin/<driver>.efi' should work and should be capable of network
> boot and iSCSI boot.  As far as docs, I'd say start with 'make doc'.

There are three relevant targets that you may want to try building:

make bin/<driver>.efi will give you an EFI application that looks like the 
normal BIOS-based iPXE.  You should be able to use commands such as "dhcp".

make bin/<driver>.efidrv will give you an EFI driver that you can load from the 
EFI shell.

make bin/<driver>.efirom will give you an EFI ROM image (i.e. the EFI driver 
packaged as a ROM).

There is no iPXE-specific support for iSCSI boot under EFI.  You may be able to 
get the generic EFI iSCSI boot support working with the iPXE driver 
(.efidrv/.efirom).

The support for EFI in gPXE is substantially out of date, and is known not to 
work on a variety of platforms.  Specifically, gPXE breaks the EFI device 
enumeration model, does not implement the HII protocol, and totally fails to 
handle multiple-port devices.  Upgrade to iPXE, or be prepared to waste your 
time and money dealing with problems that have already been fixed for you.

Michael