[ipxe-devel] building for use virtualbox

[Klaus Espenlaub]

On 26.01.2013 20:57, Robin Smidsrød wrote:
> On 24.01.2013 18:09, Andrew Bobulsky wrote:
>> 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 use the vboxmanage command to replace the built-in pxe rom in
> vbox with the one built from the ipxe source you're most likely getting
> the bundled ipxe from vbox, not the one you compiled. I have tried a
> bunch of alternatives to make it load a custom ROM, but I've been
> unsuccessful so far. If you figure it out, please report back.

Actually it's not really intentional that VirtualBox ships iPXE, because 
the "switch to iPXE" project isn't complete yet. The intended "free" PXE 
ROM in the VirtualBox base package would be some reasonably dated 
Etherboot (derived from "almost" 5.4.3). Seems to have slipped into 4.2.0 :)

Telling VirtualBox to use a different PXE ROM is quite easy, you just 
have to make sure that the ROM image meets the size requirements. 56KB 
max (to spell it out: 57344 bytes), anything bigger will be silently 
ignored and the internal fallback will kick in again.

You have to be rather selective with the features, otherwise it won't 
fit. It's so easy to pick too many iPXE features :)

Klaus

> -- Robin