[gPXE] Iscsi booting an HP thin client with gPXE 1.0.0

Shao Miller Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
Sat Mar 20 19:58:57 EDT 2010


Andrew Bobulsky wrote:
>
> Mark,
>
> Can you try disabling Automatic Restart on boot failure and tell us 
> what the error code on the blue screen is?  Try tapping F8 after the 
> gpxe connects to the iSCSI target and you should get an advanced boot 
> options menu.
>
> If the error is something like "Inaccessible boot device," then you're 
> likely missing a NIC driver in your Win7 image, or the appropriate 
> driver isn't set to load at boot time.
>
> FWIW though, since you do manage to get the Windows Boot Manager 
> loaded, I doubt this is a gPXE issue.
>

I agree 100% with Andrew's process and conclusion suggestions. :)  Mark, 
you mentioned that other workstations boot just fine from the same 
image.  I think that you should take your image, DD it to an HDD, boot 
the thin client with that HDD (somehow, maybe with an IDE ribbon), 
install the NIC in Windows, then DD the image back to your SAN.  That 
should make sure the Windows drivers are available for the iSCSI 
connection to persist past the point where it's no longer gPXE's 
responsibility to provide disk I/O.

You could also consider using a Windows PE and adapting the following 
guide to pre-install the NIC into the SAN image:

http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/port_winnt_sanboot

- Shao Miller
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