[ipxe-devel] WinPE 3.0, boot with iSCSI target

[Michael Brown]

On Wednesday 14 Mar 2012 15:22:01 Andrew Bobulsky wrote:
> Double check the contents of your ISO file.  If you're attempting to
> boot a flat WinPE ISO, where you see a \Windows and \Program Files
> directory, while you *shouldn't* be experiencing an error reading the
> BCD, it will fail at a later point in time.  Generally, you'll only be
> able to SAN-Boot a WinPE ISO that extracts the PE from a .wim file,
> usually located in \Sources\boot.wim.
> 
> Second, I'm guessing that you're attempting to install directly to an
> iSCSI target.  You'll want to change your 'sanhook' directive to omit
> the '--no-describe' option.  That option prevents the SAN disk from
> being written into the iBFT, and as such it will not get passed to
> your WinPE when it boots.  Also, you *may* have more success if you
> mount the ISO as a drive letter more formally seen as an optical disk,
> such as 0xE0.  As such, your new boot commands would look like:
> 
> dhcp
> set keep-san 1
> sanhook --drive 0x80 iscsi:192.168.146.132::::iqn.2012-01.local:win7disk
> sanboot --drive 0xE0 --no-describe http://10.0.0.1/path.to.WinPE.iso
> 
> It's entirely possible that this might not work at all, or leave you
> in the exact same situation.  But, I've had a few minor tweaks like
> those resolve some issues with more stubborn machine BIOSes in the
> past, and hope that it might work for you ;)

This is great stuff, and I'd really like to write up a Howto guide for using 
WinPE to carry out a direct iSCSI installation, since it's becoming a FAQ.  Do 
you have any recommendations on the best way to construct a suitable WinPE 
ISO?  (Can you use the raw .wim images from the OS installation DVD?  What 
extra files do you need to add to make a bootable ISO from the .wim?)

Michael