VirtualBox (6.1) provides both the DHCP and TFTP server, so things are supposed to be easy.
But I can't make it work. Here are my steps. Please feel free to correct me if I misunderstood some step (or forgot something?), this is what I got up to now.
First, I created a new VM in VirtualBox, named text_pxe_1. Leave the network on "NAT", and select "Network" boot only.
On Linux, the VirtualBox TFTP server folder is located in the VirtualBox "config" folder: /home/$USER/.config/VirtualBox where you need to create a TFTP folder.
I fetched the Debian netboot archive from here:
deb[DOT]debian[DOT]org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot[DOT]tar[DOT]gz
and extracted its content into /home/$USER/.config/VirtualBox/TFTP
Next, added a symlink, because VirtualBox requires that the boot file be named <vmname>.pxe:
Code: Select all
$ ln -s pxelinux.0 test_pxe_1.pxe
Code: Select all
$ ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 sk sk 4096 mars 22 18:37 debian-installer
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sk sk 47 avril 29 10:52 ldlinux[DOT]c32 -> debian-installer/amd64/boot-screens/ldlinux[DOT]c32
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sk sk 33 avril 29 10:52 pxelinux[DOT]0 -> debian-installer/amd64/pxelinux[DOT]0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sk sk 35 avril 29 10:52 pxelinux[DOT]cfg -> debian-installer/amd64/pxelinux[DOT]cfg
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sk sk 10 avril 29 10:53 test_pxe_1[DOT]pxe -> pxelinux.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 sk sk 65 mars 22 18:37 version[DOT]info
But when booting, iPXE now finds the .pxe file, but claims it can't find ldlinux.c32 (that is obviously there !)
What steps can I take to go further? I have 0 experience on PXE issues, I don't know what to do next.
What is strange is that I tried this on a Windows host: decompressing the Debian archive failed to create the symlinks
(as AFAIK there is no such thing on MSW), and I had empty files instead.
But I copied the file ldlinux.c32 from debian-installer/amd64/boot-screens into root TFTP folder (along with de configuration file) and I was able to have the PXE boot and start installing the OS.
FWIW, this is a follow up on this SuperUser question, that hasn't got much attention yet
superuser[DOT]com/questions/1718112
(9 views in 5 days... |-( )