Sorry for butting in, but please notice that Michael suggested
dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sda
From
...the usb key results in a blank usb key (sdc1)...
I suspect you tried something like
dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sdc1
The right command were
dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sdc
(your usb pen drive is /dev/sdc, not /dev/sdc1, the
latter is the first partition on the pen drive)
If nothing works you may use grub4dos to chainload
ipxe (or even a gpxe, if that is your preference).
Hope this helps.
Levente
As I have mentioned previously, using dd to clone the .usb file to the
usb key results in a blank usb key (sdc1). On the off chance that the
entire contents were invisible for some reason, I tried to boot it
anyway, and simply got a black screen with nothing at all. Per your
other email request, a little more detail:
We have a Windows DHCP server which passes PXE to our WDS server.
WDS has several boot and restore images available, which all work fine
when PXE booting a Dell system normally.
The purpose of iPXE (previously gPXE) is to be able to PXE boot Mac
systems and use this restore functionality.
This works perfectly when booting gPXE from CD made from the ISO. As
USB is more convenient, and not all Mac systems have an optical drive,
I tried to get this working on USB.
When attempting to use the iPXE ISO on CD, you get as far as choosing
the PXE boot image to boot from, and then the boot process (loading
windows progress bar at the bottom) simply never moves. This
indicates an issue with iPXE that does not exist with gPXE. I'm happy
to go with iPXE if gPXE is simply not going to be workable, but we may
need to actually get iPXE working on CD then before we move on to USB.
When attempting to boot USB made via dd, you get nothing at all, just
black. If you try this same USB on a Dell, you get non system disk or
disk error, cntl+alt+del to reboot. Both behaviors are consistent
with a blank volume which indicates the files aren't invisible, they
just aren't there. This would indicate to me either dd in Ubuntu
12LTS is broken in some way, or the source .usb file is empty. A
utility on Windows that is supposed to be able to open .usb files says
it's corrupt or the wrong format.
As a fallback, since you can copy the contents of a bootable WinPE ISO
to a USB stick and simply boot it, I thought I'd try that with gPXE/iPXE.
When attempting to boot a USB device made by copying the CD files to
USB, you get a black screen with GRUB and a flashing _ in the corner
and that's it, nothing further happens. I'm guessing this might be
due to incorrect pointers for the device type since they are CD files
on USB?
When attempting to boot a HD with the CD files copied to it, you're
told something like no system files found (I don't have it in front me
me this moment) which again I assume is some device pointer issue.
Hope this helps flesh out the issues and guide some ideas what we
might try to get things working.
Cheers,
Yadin
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Yadin Flammer - Systems Administrator
College of Arts& Architecture, Penn State University
228 Borland Building Office Phone: 814-865-0990
University Park, PA 16802 Dept. Phone: 814-865-1571
Email:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Dept. Fax:
814-863-6227
On 6/13/13 8:17 PM, Michael Brown wrote:
Yadin Flammer<[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the response. I have tried ipxe and it also does not work.
Trying to dd it to a drive under ubuntu 12 LTS results in a blank
drive. Copying the files from the ISO to the USB results in booting to
a black screen with GRUB and a flashing cursor and nothing else. I
tried posting to the ipxe forums but they appear to not be working as
no
post happens and no error is given as to why.
Any advice on getting a USB drive to work with ipxe, as well as getting
the forums to work so I can reach a wider audience, are appreciated.
Cheers,
Yadin
On 6/13/2013 1:01 PM, Michael Brown wrote:
On Thursday 13 Jun 2013 17:14:49 Yadin Flammer wrote:
I've been trying to get gpxe to boot from a USB drive, and even an
internal hard drive, but no luck. Using the ISO for a CD works
perfectly, but a USB key would be much more convenient. The .usb
and
.dsk files that download appear to be corrupt every time as no
application can open them (winimage says they are corrupt), or the
contents when dd to a disk under linux are corrupt. Copying the
contents of the .iso to a USB drive or internal HD does not result
in a
bootable system regardless of the format or setup of the drive.
Has anyone managed to make a bootable USB key or internal drive with
the
gpxe environment and if so precisely how?
gPXE has not been maintained for several years. Please upgrade to
iPXE, which
is the replacement for gPXE.
You won't be able to open the .usb image, since it doesn't contain a
filesystem. It's a raw disk image; you need to transfer it to the
USB key
using dd (or equivalent). Be aware that this will erase all existing
content
of the USB key.
Michael
Use dd to transfer the iPXE .usb image to the USB key, then boot from that USB
key. For example, assuming your USB key is /dev/sda, then use
dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sda
(Warning: /dev/sda is probably your main system disk. Find out which device
represents your USB key and use that instead.)
Forum posts by new users are moderated to eliminate spam, which is why yours
hasn't appeared yet.
Michael
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