Net-boot arm64 with nfsroot, Re: Create fai-cd for other architecture?

[Steffen Grunewald]

On Fri, 2023-01-27 at 14:01:08 +0100, Thomas Lange wrote:
> Here are some code snippets I found for dhcpd.conf:
> 
> 
>    if substring(option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 20) = "PXEClient:Arch:00000" {
>          filename "fai/pxelinux.0";
>    }
>    if substring(option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 20) = "PXEClient:Arch:00007" {
>          filename "fai/syslinux.efi";
>    }
> }
> 
> 
>      if option arch = 00:00 {
>          filename "fai/pxelinux.0";
>      } elsif option arch = 00:09 {
>          filename "fai/bootx64.efi";
>      } elsif option arch = 00:07 {
>          filename "fai/grubnetx64.efi";
>      } elsif option arch = 00:06 {
>          filename "fai/bootx64.efi";
>      }

I've been using those for years now with syslinux, they are x86(-64) only.

For ARM64 (11 decimal) there's *only* grubnetaa64.efi which will then load
grub/grub.cfg - which doesn't seem to be customizable the way we're used to
with MAC or IP addresses. (There are signed and unsigned versions of that
file; I've chosen the signed one for now.) No means to read the individual
pxelinux.cfg/* file. (I'll have to check the syslinux issues whether someone
else has asked for non-x86 support.)

Meanwhile, I was able to boot the single machine into "sysinfo", but only
with a Buster kernel (4.19), a Bullseye one (5.10) apparently runs into
issues with the many network interfaces provided (but not connected) of the
Cavium ThunderX SoC, and eventually freezes. I'll give that one another go
next week.

Thanks so far, S