How to select a boot disk wie pxelinux

Question

I’ve configured a computer with pxelinux and I am able to boot from DHCP/TFTP. I can receive the bootloader and then boot from a local hdd or ssd. But I want to choose with the bootloader from which device it should boot. For example, on a computer with two devices, I want to choose from which device it should boot. I’ve fiddled around with the config from pxelinux and read the documentation, but it seems it only mentions the net boot process. Here is my example config file (default)

default ssd
prompt 1
ONTIMEOUT local
timeout 3000

MENU TITLE PXE Menu

LABEL hdd
    MENU LABEL Boot local hard drive
    root= (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop
    initrd=(hd0,2)/boot/initrd-3.11.6-4-desktop

LABEL ssd
    MENU LABEL Boot local hard drive
    LOCALBOOT -1

It has pxelinux 6.0.3 and I’ve tried nearly every combination, but the only answer is always that it can’t find the kernel or initrd file, no matter if I say /dev/sda2 or (hd0,2) or something.

Am I missing something, or is this task not possible with pxelinux?

---

For every option, the answer is always something is "No such file or directory", except for option "two", that boots ok. (I couldn't get a log from the console). tftp from client to server is working without any problems.

default menu.c32
prompt 0
ONTIMEOUT local
timeout 3000

MENU TITLE PXE Menu

LABEL one
        MENU LABEL Boot local hard drive
    root= hd0 2
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop

LABEL two
        MENU LABEL Boot local hard drive
        LOCALBOOT 0

LABEL three
        MENU LABEL Boot local hard drive
    root=/dev/sda2
    kernel vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop
    initrd=/boot/initrd-3.11.6-4-desktop.gz

LABEL four
        MENU LABEL VIER
    root=/dev/sda2 rw
        KERNEL ftp://179.99.99.1/chain.c32

LABEL five
    MENU LABEL Hole chain.c32 uebers Netz
    root hd0 2
    KERNEL chain.c32

LABEL six
        MENU LABEL VIER
    root=(hd0,2) rw
        KERNEL /boot/chain.c32

LABEL seven
    MENU LABEL Hole chain.c32 uebers Netz
    root hd0 2
    KERNEL /boot/chain.c32
    initrd=/boot/initrd-3.11.6-4-desktop.gz 

---

The status of the xinetd daemon shows that the client tftp is requesting the files from the server. It seems, as if the client is getting the files from the server. But why does it not process it...

xinetd.service - Xinetd A Powerful Replacement For Inetd
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/xinetd.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2016-06-29 16:08:46 CEST; 21min ago
 Main PID: 1536 (xinetd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/xinetd.service
           |-1536 /usr/sbin/xinetd -stayalive -dontfork
           `-2938 in.tftpd -s /rde/installation/tftpboot -vvv

Jun 29 16:21:47 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4161]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename menu.c32
Jun 29 16:22:32 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4279]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename chain.c32
Jun 29 16:22:32 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4280]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename chain.c32
Jun 29 16:22:36 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4288]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename chain.c32
Jun 29 16:24:17 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4544]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename pxelinux.0
Jun 29 16:24:17 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4545]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename ldlinux.c32
Jun 29 16:24:17 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4556]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename pxelinux.cfg/default
Jun 29 16:24:17 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4558]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename menu.c32
Jun 29 16:24:34 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4580]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename chain.c32
Jun 29 16:24:38 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[4588]: RRQ from ::ffff:199.99.99.10 filename chain.c32

Answer 1

I found out, how to configure pxelinux for my needs. tftp was already running and working, i made a "tail -f /var/log/messages" to discover that chain.c32 was not working (it was loading, but nothing happened):

2016-06-29T16:15 uaewg-srv xinetd[1536]: START: tftp from=::ffff:172.99.199.9
2016-06-29T16:15 uaewg-srv in.tftpd[2939]: RRQ from ::ffff:172.99.199.9 filename chain.c32
2016-06-29T16:18 uaewg-srv sshd[3183]: Accepted keyboard-interactive/pam for uae_wg_sim from 127.0.0.1 port 54948 ssh2

Then i could try it with the other files, i provided the vmlinuz and initrd files in the ../tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default config file:

prompt 0
ONTIMEOUT local
timeout 3000

MENU TITLE PXE Menu

LABEL local
        MENU LABEL Boot local hard drive
        LOCALBOOT 0

LABEL hdd
      kernel vmlinuz-3.11.6-4-desktop
      APPEND initrd=initrd-3.11.10-21-desktop  root=/dev/sda2

chain.c32, menu.c32 did either not worked on the system, i don´t know why, maybe i try to find out if i have time left, i am glad that it is now working. /var/log/messages is a good help for error diagnostic, it was not clear, who was responsible for the tftpd, but i found out that it presumably was started by xinetd and not systemd. I changed the content of /etc/xinetd.d/tftp to :

service tftp
{
#   per_source      = 11
    cps         = 100 2
    socket_type     = dgram
    protocol        = udp
    wait            = yes
    user            = root
    server          = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
    server_args     = -s /rde/installation/tftpboot -vvv
    flags           = IPv6 IPv4
}

regards and thanks to cas for his help!

Answer 2

You need to use the chain loader (chain.c32) from syslinux. As with the other syslinux modules there are different versions for BIOS, efi32, and efi64.

LABEL local
    MENU DEFAULT
    MENU LABEL Boot from Local Hard Disk
    KERNEL /path/to/chain.c32
    APPEND hd0 2

That's adapted slightly from my /srv/tftp/default file - my version has KERNEL http://ip.ip.ip.ip/tftp/chain.c32 (my httpd is configured to serve /tftp/ from /srv/tftp - tftp would work just as well) and APPEND hd0 0.