[ipxe-devel] Boot .iso.gz with memdisk

[Sven Dreyer]

Hi List,

I am currently generating nightly ISO builds, which are then
gzip'ed. I would like to boot these ISO images using iPXE and
memdisk.

What I did up to now is:
- PXE rom gets gpxelinux.0
- gpxelinux.0 loads default config file, which contains:
   kernel http://servername/memdisk
   append iso raw initrd=http://servername/nightly.iso.gz
- both memdisk and .iso.gz are fetched via http
- virtual CD-ROM boots, everything okay

I then changed to iPXE:
- PXE rom gets undionly.kpxe
- iPXE loads and executes script which contains:
   #!gpxe
   imgfetch http://servername/nightly.iso.gz
   chain http://servername/memdisk iso raw
- both memdisk and .iso.gz are fetched via http
- memdisk states size of ramdisk, which is exactly the size
   of the .iso.gz file
- memdisk says "Decompression error output buffer overrun".
- System halts

I tried this on various hardware and with different nics
(3c905c-txm, eepro100). I also tried the undionly.kpxe as
well as the floppy image.

When googling around I found that mknbi must be patched to
avoid this problem, but neither the memdisk nor the .iso.gz
are nbi images.

Did I get something wrong? Is there a chance to directly load
memdisk and an .iso.gz from iPXE?

Thanks in advance,
Sven