[ipxe-devel] Problem chainloading iPXE from inside iPXE

[Mike Sollanych]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robin Smidsrød" <robin at smidsrod.no>
> To: ipxe-devel at ipxe.org
> Sent: Tuesday, June 7, 2011 7:06:42 AM
> Subject: Re: [ipxe-devel] Problem chainloading iPXE from inside iPXE
>
> hpa (author of syslinux project) told me that syslinux 4.00+ has a
> config COM32 module that should allow you to chain off to another
> TFTP
> server (in this case your FOG instance) by modifying the TFTP path
> prefix and still continue to use UNDI (and avoiding ipxe.lkrn).
>
> I have been planning to test out this setup for a while, but time has
> not been available. Please do report back if modifying the TFTP path
> prefix works for you.

I have been able to make this work as far as it is able (i.e. it will load
the FOG SYSLINUX menu off of the FOG tftp server), but unfortunately it
doesn't seem to be able to take me much further than that.

The menu entry:

LABEL fog.currentTaskDebug1
	CONFIG tftp://[SERVER FQDN]/pxelinux.cfg/default
	MENU LABEL Fog redirect testing mode
	TEXT HELP
	 Boots to the ITDS FOG server using PXELINUX CONFIG.
	ENDTEXT

works fine, though it seems like the version of Syslinux used on the other end
is different than this one and so the password lines in its config file don't
work, but that's not really important at this point.

However, I need to load the MAC-address specific config file for a machine, which
PXELINUX does nicely on its own with its config filename precedence, but the CONFIG
line doesn't allow me to specify (afaik) that it should scan for the config filename
the same way as during initial boot; instead I seem to have to provide the 
exact name, and as there are no variables in SYSLINUX, there's no good way to
do this.

I've joined the SYSLINUX mailing list, so I'll ask them if there's any
better way to do this. It's at times like this that I wish I was a lower-level
programmer, so I could just write my own COM32 module to do this. Alas.

Thanks,
Mike Sollanych