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I'm trying to boot through the network with the help of PXELINUX. I've installed the necessary tools using the official Syslinux documentation.

My PXELINUX configuration file (/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default) contains:

default menu.c32
prompt 0
menu title SPIOT BOOT MENU
    label localboot
      menu label Boot Local Disk
      localboot 0
    label 1604Install
      menu label Manual Install Ubuntu 16.04
      kernel ubuntu/linux
      append vga=788 initrd=ubuntu/initrd.gz locale=en_GB.UTF-8 keyboard-config$
    label clone
      menu label Clone Disk
      kernel clonezilla/vmlinuz
      append initrd=clonezilla/initrd.img boot=live username=user union=overlay$
    label Winux
      menu label Install Winux
      Kernel Winux/memdisk
      append iso initrd=Winux/Winux.iso raw

The menu is displaying successfully in the network connected machine:

Boot Menu

The local disk, Ubuntu installer, and Clonezilla menu items work. The custom ISO which I've created (the fourth menu item in the screenshot) is not working. I don't get any errors - it just skips without errors and returns back to the boot menu.

Fourth menu item:

label Winux
  menu label Install Winux
  Kernel Winux/memdisk
  append iso initrd=Winux/Winux.iso raw

The necessary tools like memdisk and the directory/file architectures are all correct.

My goal is to boot a raw ISO file through the network. If there are any other possible solutions, please guide me.

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1 Answer 1

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memdisk is a last resort PXE approach. It does not work with all the "bootable" ISOs out there.

  • It is a BIOS only technology
  • It requires net transferring to memory (usually TFTP) the whole ISO
  • If the booting OS changes to protected mode the access to the ISO in memory in the form of an emulated drive will fail
  • etc
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