Question about iPXE variants

[ConiKost]

Hi! I see, that this the recent 2.0.0 tag release, the daily autobuilds changed a bit.

I have a couple of questions:

• What is the difference between ipxe-legacy.efi````and ipxe.efi```? At least for me, the non legacy seems to ignore the provided config file via dhcp? Is there more information about this?
• Are x86_64-pcbios/{ipxe.pxe,undionly.kpxe} 64bit builds, so the won't work on old legacy 32bit only hardware? Since no i386-pcbios does exist on autobuilds server, are there plans to 32bit autobuilds? (on only own compiling, which would be fine for me?)

Thanks!

[NiKiZe]

• The main (only?) difference is in which drivers are pulled in, one example is native USB support in ipxe.efi
  Could you be more specific in what you mean by config, are we talking about a ipxe script you provide with the filename DHCPv4 option?
• yes x86_64 is 64bit, the old bin/ is a shortcut for bin-i386-pcbios/, Even if 32bit only devices is on the rare side these days, I agree that it would be nice to have them available.

[ConiKost]

The main (only?) difference is in which drivers are pulled in, one example is native USB support in ipxe.efi
Could you be more specific in what you mean by config, are we talking about a ipxe script you provide with the filename DHCPv4 option?

Yes. I mean the DHCP option 67, which provides the boot.ipxe config file, after iPXE executes and searches for this file. If I use ipxe-legacy.efi, the file is loaded by iPXE and menu is shown and everything works correctly. If I use ipxe.efi instead, iPXE fails to boot. I had suspected, that this is something related to the legacy, since I haven't found anything about it. But maybe the issue is something else? Test is currently done in VMware Workstation.

ipxe-legacy.pxe

ipxe.pxe

yes x86_64 is 64bit, the old bin/ is a shortcut for bin-i386-pcbios/, Even if 32bit only devices is on the rare side these days, I agree that it would be nice to have them available.

That would be nice!

[NiKiZe]

boot.ipxe would, as I said, be a script you are trying to run/execute, config in iPXE is compile time only, you find these in the src/config/
But I don't see that as relevant, what you show in the pictures is actually a hypervisor crashing, And you don't get the iPXE version or features banner at all.

• Have you seen this issue on anything other than VMware?
• Are you building both from the same sources?
• Have you verified that ipxe.efi has not been corrupted in transfer?

[ConiKost]

Have you seen this issue on anything other than VMware?

Just fired up a T450s, same behavior here.

Are you building both from the same sources?

No, both are from your autobuilds server. But I can try use my own compiled versions.

Have you verified that ipxe.efi has not been corrupted in transfer?

Yes, hash sum is the same as from archive from autobuilds on the pxe server.

[NiKiZe]

For the T450s, see #1358 which was just fixed.
I'd love to get the full machine model and bios version on it (the full bios version string, see the examples in the table in that issue)

[mcb30]

• What is the difference between ipxe-legacy.efi````and ipxe.efi```?

The only difference is that the -legacy binaries do not include the USB network drivers. See commit 2161e976c for details.

• Are x86_64-pcbios/{ipxe.pxe,undionly.kpxe} 64bit builds, so the won't work on old legacy 32bit only hardware? Since no i386-pcbios does exist on autobuilds server, are there plans to 32bit autobuilds? (on only own compiling, which would be fine for me?)

The top-level /ipxe.lkrn, /ipxe.pxe, and /undionly.kpxe files are still (for now) the 32-bit builds.

[ConiKost]

The only difference is that the -legacy binaries do not include the USB network drivers. See commit 2161e976c for details.

Thank you very much for clarifying!

The top-level /ipxe.lkrn, /ipxe.pxe, and /undionly.kpxe files are still (for now) the 32-bit builds.

But this seems only to apply for https://boot.ipxe.org itself, not the ipxeboot.tar.gz right? Maybe it could be possible to add i386builds too?

lrwxrwxrwx  1 conikost users   15 Apr  7 01:47 ipxe.pxe -> x86_64/ipxe.pxe
lrwxrwxrwx  1 conikost users   20 Apr  7 01:47 undionly.kpxe -> x86_64/undionly.kpxe