Virtualbox 7.0 PXE EFI network issues ?

[Nicolas-MEAE]

Hi !

On a Debian 11 host (fresh install and up to date), I am trying to install a VM using Virtualbox 7.0.8 via PXE with EFI enabled using a virtio interface (bridged mode), without luck so far.
I tried with 3 different iPXE servers running different configurations / versions / images (including one updated quite recently 03/2023).

The exact same VM configuration PXE/EFI is working fine with virtualbox 6.1.38 to 44 (didn't try with older versions).

- PXE phase 1 (EFI) is ok : system is loaded from remote TFTP server.
- PXE phase 2 (running the PXE temporary system from RAM downloaded from TFTP) is not : the network seems unreliable (download starts but keep forever or times out after a few minutes).

Tests done so far :

- Using any other virtualbox interface (Intel types...) stops at PXE phase 1. Possibly not compatible with iPXE ?
- Using vbox "extention pack" doesn't help (documentation states that extension pack supports intel PXE https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01. ... installing ).
- Disabling EFI, still on vbox 7, everything works better, unfortunately, it is not possible to install OS that require EFI... but at least it seems the "VirtualBox legacy bios" works well.

I would really appreciate any clue or suggestion about what to try next ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated !

Best regards

[scottgus1]

I have a remembrance that a recent post reported an issue with the virtio network card in 7.0. I don't have a link or know if there is a fix yet. You could try dropping back to the network card the Create Virtual Machine wizard picked for the OS you set it for. The network activity bandwidth probably will not be that much off from the theoretical virtio bandwidth.

[Nicolas-MEAE]

Thank You @scottgus1 ; I will do as you suggested !

From what I can see virtio is somewhat working but flawed (very slow and prone to errors, especialy for large files - for which pxe is supposed to handle).

I will try to find if there is a 7.0 virtio bug open somewhere so I can contribute, and will follow up on future release notes to test again if a fix is published.