Good evening fellow gPXE users,<div><br></div><div>For some time now I've been using and testing gPXE with VMware both for the convenience and flexibility offered by doing so, and I suspect that many of you also do the same. When I first began doing so, I was chainloading gPXE from the default PCNET32 ROM included with VMware Workstation, and after constantly complaining in IRC one day about my tftpd32 server crashing, Shao Miller ran me through the steps to add a gPXE ROM directly into the VM's BIOS.</div>
<div><br></div><div>While there is an old guide for doing this with Etherboot on the Wiki (somewhere), I realized that every time I wanted to modify another VM, I dug back into the first one I modified to look up how I did it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Things being what they are, I rewrote a guide from scratch today specifically for gPXE and VMware Workstation, including screenshots and step-by-step instructions, including a few troubleshooting steps for the not-so-technically sophisticated reader. While the guide mainly focuses on performing the steps on a Windows desktop and indeed all of the screenshots are taken from one, I am taking slightly for granted that it's so thorough that any Linux user of Workstation would be able to follow the steps too. However, if there are any gotchas about performing any of these steps on Linux, I would appreciate if anyone could offer some input in that regard in case there's anything that I missed.</div>
<div><br></div><div>That said, I think it also makes sense to produce a similar guide adapted specifically for VMware Fusion for OS X.... Though it'd be nice to include or perhaps document (unless it's already done) compiling on OS X as well, but I digress.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The guide is written with what I hope is enough information that someone who is both a new user of gPXE <i>and</i> VMware could complete it successfully. Similarly, I've tried to outline the information in it in such a fashion that more advanced users can quickly skip over mundane steps like "Locating the VM's .vmx configuration file" without getting too lost by scrolling too far.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Ladies and gentlemen, if any of you fellow interested gPXE users wouldn't mind, I humbly submit the guide to you all for review, and of course any criticisms, changes, or additions you may have :-)</div>
<div><br></div><div>The article is currently living under the "Application Notes" section of the wiki. Link: <a href="http://etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/gpxeonvmware">http://etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/gpxeonvmware</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>Thank you very much, everyone. With special thanks to Shao for showing me how to do this in the first place, and Marty for being so encouraging when it comes to matters of the Wiki.</div><div><br></div>
<div>Best regards,</div><div>Andrew Bobulsky</div>