[gPXE] Unable to get past iSCSI drive message for SAN Installation...

[Andrew Bobulsky]

Good morning Matt,

 

The issue that you're having is that in order to boot from PXE/CD/DVD/etc
after connecting to a SAN, gPXE relies on the SAN boot failing.  That's what
the "set keep-san 1" is all about:  "keep-san" basically tells gPXE to leave
a SAN disk attached to the BIOS and to write the iBFT (that magic bit of
memory that lets an OS detect the SAN disk you've attached) in spite of the
fact that the disk isn't bootable.  You can see here, from the output text
that you've posted, that your iSCSI target is a bootable drive:

 

DHCP (net0 00:01:02:03:04:05). ok
Registered as BIOS Drive 0x80
Booting from BIOS Drive 0x80

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

 

A drive is bootable when it has an MBR and an active partition.  This drive
appears to have NT6+ (Vista/7) boot code in its MBR.  That boot code checks
the active partition for BOOTMGR (the Windows Boot Manager, the NT6
replacement for the Windows 2000/XP/2003 NTLDR) and chainloads it when
found.  Since there's no OS installed on the drive, you're getting that
error message.

 

To delete the MBR on your target, connect to it using the Microsoft iSCSI
Initiator, open a command prompt and run diskpart (you'll be prompted to
elevate via UAC if it's enabled).

 

In diskpart type:   LIST DISK

In the output, determine which disk corresponds to your iSCSI target.  For
the purposes of the screenshot here, assume it is disk 5, and SELECT the
DISK number like so:  SELECT DISK 2

You can see that the SELECTed disk has become highlighted by typing LIST
DISK again.

 

 

From here, type CLEAN and diskpart will erase all partition and MBR
information from the disk:

 



 

Disconnect from your iSCSI target, and try your netboot again, and you
should be good to go!

 

Cheers,

Andrew Bobulsky

 

 

From: gpxe-bounces at etherboot.org [mailto:gpxe-bounces at etherboot.org] On
Behalf Of Matthew Helton
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 3:03 PM
To: gpxe at etherboot.org
Subject: [gPXE] Unable to get past iSCSI drive message for SAN
Installation...

 

All,

        This one has me stymied. I have a fairly complete TFTP/PXE/gPXE
environment running with full DHCP/DNS services, however a native gPXE
Windows 7 iSCSI installation has eluded me this far.

iSCSI Target: Windows Storage Server 2008 R2. 

gPXE is working great.. I just can't get past it!

My gPXE Boot Script:

#!gpxe
dhcp net0
set keep-san 1
set initiator-iqn iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:mywin7box.homelab.local
sanboot
iscsi:myiscsitargetbox.homelab.local::::iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:myiscsitar
getbox-mywin7box-target
chain tftp://mytftpserverbox.homelab.local/boot/pxeboot.com

The box boots normally:

gPXE 1.0.1 blah ~we all love gPXE and this is where we can get it ~ blah
Features: iSCSI DNS TFTP Multiboot PXE PXEXT
 
DHCP (net0 00:01:02:03:04:05). ok
Registered as BIOS Drive 0x80
Booting from BIOS Drive 0x80

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
_

Note the _Cursor... it won't Chain (I think).
 
The bootstrap program referenced in "chain
tftp://mytftpserverbox.homelab.local/boot/pxeboot.com" boots a
fully-functional WinPE3.0 image

BOOTMGR.exe is present in both the root TFTP directory and the /BOOT
directories.

The WinPE3.0 image will boot via PXE if I change the boot program to
pxeboot.com

What am I missing here?


Thanks in advance,

Matt Helton

 

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