[ipxe-devel] using iPXE in a VM

[Gruher, Joseph R]

Hello-

I am trying to use iPXE with a VM in VMWare ESXi 5.1.  For the most part it seems to be working.  I created a VM with an emulated e1000 network adapter and an iPXE ROM.  I edited the VM to use the iPXE ROM for the network adapter BIOS.  When I start the VM iPXE comes up and I can enter the CLI.  I can configure an IP and successfully sanhook a target.  The next step I then want to do is exit iPXE and boot into an OS installer CD to install my guest OS on the VM.  However, after I run the "exit" command in iPXE, nothing happens, it does not continue to the next boot device.

I've done something similar on physical hardware and it works well, although in that case I'm booting iPXE from a USB key, rather than as the NIC ROM, but otherwise the process is the same and works.

Even here on the VM, if I do not CTRL-B to the iPXE CLI and just let it execute the default iPXE behavior, it will bring up iPXE and look for PXE servers, and then fall through to the OS installer CD just fine, exactly as desired.  So my boot order seems to work.  It is only if I CTRL-B to the CLI and then try to exit that it hangs.  It just sits there after the exit command forever and never moves on in the VM BIOS boot order.

Anyone else run into this problem?  Any thoughts on how I might get this to work?  Thanks!

-Joe

(Attempting to attach a screenshot.)

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