[bug #33348] PXE support doesn't play well/at all with gPXE http support.

[Roc Vallès]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?33348>

                 Summary: PXE support doesn't play well/at all with gPXE http
support.
                 Project: GNU GRUB
            Submitted by: rvalles
            Submitted on: Thu 19 May 2011 07:22:48 AM GMT
                Category: Network
                Severity: Major
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Software Error
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 
                 Release: Bazaar - trunk
         Reproducibility: Every Time
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

I have a setup of netboot with gPXE and pxelinux (from syslinux), which is
like this:
- DHCP server runs on the gateway, points clients to an http NBP in a server
computer which is pxelinux.
(dhcp-boot=net:gPXE-booted,http://server/netboot/pxelinux.0)
- pxelinux somehow asks pxe to load its files from the same url base, displays
pretty menus, loads and boots kernels and stuff.

Since grub2 is getting quite mature and has pxe support, I built current bzr
(3315) with gcc-4.5.2 and did the following:
./grub-mkimage --format=i386-pc-pxe --output=grub.pxe --prefix='(pxe)/grub' -d
grub-core/ pxe pxecmd
cp -v grub-core/*.lst grub-core/*.mod /var/www/server/netboot/grub
cp grub.pxe /var/www/server/netboot/

And I then I tried to load grub2 both directly from gPXE and chained from
pxelinux. I'm both cases I'm thrown into rescue mode.

When using gPXE directly, there's no (pxe), grub pxe commands don't work, as
if they weren't there at all, and "set" doesn't display anything pxe related,
just prefix and root. My understanding is that for some reason here grub can't
interact at all with the gPXE that loaded it.

After using pxelinux to load grub2, pxe commands seem to be there and work to
a degree. However, the pxe setup is entirely wrong: The router (rather than
the server) has somehow become the pxe_default_server and grub/gpxe are
attempting to get their files from it via TFTP rather than the HTTP setup. My
understanding is that for some reason here grub didn't limit itself to using
the TFTP apis PXE provides but instead it tried to do its own setup, breaking
gpxe's HTTP support.








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