[gPXE] Will gPXE support booting from iscsi cd-rom?

[Andrew Bobulsky]

Aldrich,

I don't see any reason that booting from a CD-via-SAN shouldn't be possible, were gPXE to support it, and assuming that INT13 is the correct interrupt for a CD drive and that BIOS drive 80 or 81 is also the right drive for this.... you get the idea ;-)

Still, however, XP/2003 Windows Setup (which is a very limited capability WinPE) would need to support an iSCSI target connection, and I don't think that such support is possible at the moment in XP/2003 Windows Setup.  WinPE 2 and later (for Vista, 2008, and 7) does have iSCSI target support, but I'm not too sure that it has iSCSI boot support built in.  You'd have to look into that one.

It would be neat if that could work, though.

-Andrew Bobulsky

On May 24, 2010, at 3:29 AM, KernSafe Technology wrote:

> Hi all,
>  
> I'd also interest in this topic, if we modify int13 and implement a CD-ROM, when windows installation startup, press F6 to install a iSCSI initiator driver, is it will possible to install a OS by using a virtual CDROM in a SAN? 
> It will be more convince for users, because some type of SANs (as we have) have a virtual CD-ROM emulator function, so the workstations do not require a physical disk installed and not require a CD-ROM either.
>  
> Aldrich,
>  
> KernSafe Technology
> Windows iSCSI SAN provider,
> www.kernsafe.com
>  
> > Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 08:47:50 -0400
> > From: Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
> > To: wangjigang at thtf.com.cn
> > CC: gpxe at etherboot.org
> > Subject: Re: [gPXE] Will gPXE support booting from iscsi cd-rom?
> > 
> > Good day Jigang Wang,
> > 
> > gPXE can support booting an iSCSI HDD with GRUB4DOS installed on it. If you put an .ISO image on a partition in that SAN, then you can:
> > - Use gPXE to boot to the SAN
> > - Use GRUB4DOS to map the .ISO as a virtual CD-ROM
> > - Use GRUB4DOS to boot that CD-ROM
> > 
> > What are you planning to boot from the CD-ROM? If it's Linux or Windows, it will lose the CD-ROM once the kernel is running, since Linux and Windows do not use INTerrupt 0x13 for disk access.
> > 
> > - Shao Miller
> > _______________________________________________
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> > gPXE at etherboot.org
> > http://etherboot.org/mailman/listinfo/gpxe
> 
> 
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