[ipxe-devel] Problem with iPXE in VirtualBox

[Michael Brown]

On Thursday 05 May 2011 04:09:36 Mircea Vutcovici wrote:
> I am trying to use iPXE in a VM running in VirtualBox. The problem is
> that iPXE can not get DHCP.
> I am using the latest version of iPXE
>  (b6cad3c0eb72e99d8ae5e6944ec8e9b7c5acecfa) VirtualBox 4.0.6 r71344
> Ubuntu 11.4 64bit
> The DHCP/tftp server is OpenWRT Backfire (10.03.1-rc4, r24045)
> dnsmasq --version
> Dnsmasq version 2.55  Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Simon Kelley
> Compile time options IPv6 GNU-getopt no-DBus no-I18N DHCP TFTP
> 
> Here is the dnsmasq configuration (I've removed dhcp-host entries):
> /usr/sbin/dnsmasq -K -D -f -y -Z -b -E --enable-tftp -s lan -S /lan/
> -l /tmp/dhcp.leases -r /tmp/resolv.conf.auto --tftp-root /tftproot
> --dhcp-boot undionly.kkpxe --stop-dns-rebind
> --dhcp-range=lan,192.168.1.100,192.168.1.250,255.255.255.0,12h -2
> 'eth1'
> 
> Attached is the capture made with:
> tshark -w /tmp/iPXE-DHCP-problem.cap -pi eth1 port bootpc or port tftp
> 
> If I boot from a physical computer, I have no problems. I do not
> understand why iPXE is not receiving the DHCP responses.

I can tell from the packet trace that iPXE's DHCP client believes that it 
hasn't received any DHCPOFFERs, since bits 0 and 1 of the "secs" field are 
always zero.  (Inspired by this, I've also just added code that will enable me 
to tell from a packet trace whether or not iPXE has received any packets at 
all.)

There are some helpful hints (some of which are new) on the relevant error 
page:

  http://ipxe.org/4c106035

What does "ifstat" show after the failed DHCP attempt?

What happens if you try a static IP address?

Michael