[ipxe-devel] wimboot installs not working if doing PXE boot through IPMI commands

[Floris Bos]

On 08/01/2017 07:43 PM, shouldbe q931 wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 6:00 PM, Floris Bos <bos at je-eigen-domein.nl> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> We normally tell servers to initiate a PXE network boot through IPMI
>> commands, among the lines of:
>>
>>
>> ipmitool -I lanplus -H 1.2.3.4 -U ipmiuser -P password bootdev pxe
>> ipmitool -I lanplus -H 1.2.3.4 -U ipmiuser -P password power cycle
>>
>>
>> Works well for starting Linux installations, however if we do this with
>> wimboot Windows fails to install.
>>
>> Gives a "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an
>> existing system partition" error message in Windows setup.
>>
>> While installation does go fine if not sending the "bootdev pxe" command,
>> but manually selecting boot device from BIOS boot menu.
>>
>>
>> Like Windows setup has problems detecting what is the first hard drive when
>> we meddled with the boot order through IPMI, or something like that.
>>
>> Any solution to this?
>>
> Have you tried a wimboot boot of WinPE of the OS version that is
> failing the install and seeing if it can see drives/partitions ?

Problem seems to be specific to one Supermicro board model (X11SSL-F)
Does work on older models (e.g. X10SCM-F)

Windows does see the drive (but refuses to install on it)
But apparently BIOS/wimboot does not, as it's emulating drive 0x80 
instead of a higher number.



Yours sincerely,

Floris Bos