[ipxe-devel] iPXE with Virtualbox

[Jedrzej Kalinowski]

 On Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:25:39 +0000, Michael Brown wrote:
> On Thursday 27 Jan 2011 16:43:13 Jedrzej Kalinowski wrote:
>>  I've tried to set iPXE image as a custom LanBootRom for Virtualbox 
>> some
>>  time ago.
>>  I was following the article from Etherboot's wiki, and setting the
>>  appropriate property in VB configuration.
>>  Unfortunately it did not work for me - my iPXE rom was not called, 
>> it
>>  seems it was too big.
>>  More details on that in my unanswered post on virtualbox forum
>>  (http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=36420)
>
> You might be able to try using a later version of gcc; gcc tends to 
> get
> significantly better at size optimisation with each new major 
> version.
>
> Alternatively, you can disable a couple of features that you don't 
> need in
> config/general.h.  For example, very few people need multiboot 
> support, and
> forcing "#undef IMAGE_MULTIBOOT" in config/general.h will shrink your
> image by
> around 1.5kB before compression.
>
> Michael

 Hi,

 I'm back and here are my experiences:

 1. Thank you for the hint, some tweaks in config/general.h let me 
 create a working LanBootRom for VB 3.2-4.0. Allowed rom image size is 
 0xe000h = 57344 bytes now, it seems. The image is used for pcnet devices 
 defined in VirtualBox.

 2. I noticed a strange behavior during the DHCP session, when using 
 iPXE in VB. Sometimes it looks like iPXE can't recognize DHCPOFFER 
 packages from the server and is failing to get the IP address at 
 startup. The same packages it copes with no problem at times. I can't 
 find any cause for this in my environment (thinking both about my 
 network env and running VBox on both Win 2008 server and Ubuntu hosts).


 I'm attaching two files:
 * pcap file showing both succesfull and unsuccesfull dhcp sessions 
 (you'll see two dhcp servers responding, but it's not the case, I've 
 tried shutting one down, and it didn't help) - check last few sessions, 
 I see no difference between dhcpoffers, that got accepted by iPXE and 
 that got no response from it
 * screenshot showing output of a debug (DEBUG=dhcp) image when the DHCP 
 session doesn't go the right way.

 Best regards,
 Jedrzej Kalinowski