PXE-booting UEFI machines

[andrej]

Thanks Thomas,

Were his machines also showing erratic behaviour or simply wouldn't PXE boot at all?

Cheers,
Tink


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On Friday, July 26th, 2024 at 3:49 PM, Thomas Lange <lange at cs.uni-koeln.de> wrote:

> I've just learned that some network cards need to be set into a COMBO
> mode for properly booting PXE in UEFI mode.
> Here's the log from the FAI irc channel:
> 
> 07/25/24 [20:25:45] < dpw> My UEFI PXE boot problem is solved: the Intel i350 network adapters firmware must be flashed in a certain "usage mode" named "COMBO".
> 
> 07/25/24 [20:27:49] < dpw> Unpacking PREBOOT.zip from the "Intel Ethernet Connections Boot Utility, Preboot Images, and EFI Drivers" page and unpacking PREBOOT.exe within again results in
> 
> two files: BOOTUTIL64E.EFI and BootIMG.FLB
> 07/25/24 [20:29:14] < dpw> Using Legacy BIOS PXE boot, I created an EFI partition where I placed those two files, then booted into BIOS again, switched to UEFI boot and EFI shell as the
> 
> default boot option.
> 07/25/24 [20:30:13] < dpw> There, a 'BOOTUTIL64E.EFI -NIC=1 -UP=COMBO -FILE=BootIMG.FLB' flashed the necessary firmware version on the NICs.
> 
> 07/25/24 [20:30:51] < dpw> Now the servers PXE boot in UEFI mode.
> 
> --
> regards Thomas