[ipxe-devel] building for use virtualbox

[Andrew Bobulsky]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Warren Turkal <wt at ooyala.com> wrote:

> iPXE devs,
>
> I have successfully built ipxe and used it in virtualbox much like the
> instructions here <http://etherboot.org/wiki/romburning/vbox>. However,
> when I do the "make bin/8086100e.rom", the rom image does not appear to
> contain the HTTP support code as I cannot use http urls in the ipxe shell
> after boot and hitting ctrl-b. Commands like with "imgfetch
> http://192.0.0.1/blah.img" fail with the following error:
>
> Could not start download: Operation not supported (
> http://ipxe.org/3c092003)
>
> The HTTP code does appear to be built by default since I see "#define
> DOWNLOAD_PROTO_HTTP" in the general.h. I also see the following:
>
> $ grep -i http bin/8086100e.rom
> Binary file bin/8086100e.rom matches
>
> However, I do see "TFTP" and do not see "HTTP" in the "Features:" line of
> iPXE that shows before the prompt.
>
> I am using the tip of master for this test. The commit id is
> "3fcb8cf8dceb45f8b01e1d69d43cfd99df43b78a".
>
> Is there anything else that I should be doing to enable HTTP support in
> the iPXE rom that I am building.
>
> Thanks,
> wt
> --
> *Warren Turkal*
> Site Reliability Engineer |
> wt at ooyala.com | 650-961-3400
> www.ooyala.com | blog <http://www.ooyala.com/blog> | @ooyala<http://www.twitter.com/ooyala>
>
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Hello Warren,

If you are indeed having build-related problems, I wouldn't be able to help
you much, but I wanted to write as I've experienced this before.
 Virtualbox includes a version of iPXE that has very limited protocol
support, and it is the default PXE ROM in every vbox VM I have used.  If,
for some reason, your attempt to inject the ROM into your Virtualbox VM's
configuration didn't work, it would load the built-in version instead, and
while you'd be loading iPXE (which would *look *like a successful
implementation, but of course is just the old, built-in ROM loading).  That
built-in iPXE splash screen looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/gfVjURG.png

If you like, the only test I could suggest that might shed *some* light on
whether or not your features are being included in the build, you can
instead...

$ make bin/8086100e.pxe

...and then chainload *that* file from a TFTP server using the iPXE inside
of your VM, and check to see if your features work.  If they do, it's quite
likely you just need some updated guide on how to replace your VirtualBox
NIC's ROM.

Cheers,
Andrew Bobulsky
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