Anyone got any example .cfg files for booting a vm from PXE? Or can get me going in the right direction?  Would the .cfg file be different depending on what I chose to boot from the PXE server?

Easier said then done.  I have never done this through Unraid but I have done it on a basic xen box.

 

http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xenpvnetboot_:_A_network_bootloader_for_Xen_PV_guest

 

On a personal note I do not recommend using PXE anything on a production network unless it is for installs, upgrades, or a rescue environment.  Too many issues that make me want to stab my eyes out.

Hi,

 

Does anybody know of a guide that shows how to netboot a windows (hvm) xen img?

 

I have been searching all over but i can't even seem to figure out the right search terms. I keep finding guides showing how to do automated installs of windows.

 

What I'm trying to achieve is as follows:

 

I have a media center pc rocking openelec off of an SSD that is not big enough to install windows on in a dual boot fashion. Although openelec is perfect for the media center duties, I still need to display full windows on the big screen every once in a while.

 

I did set up a win 8 vm on unraid 6 that is working really well. I said, why not set it up with pxe, so that i can run that on the media center pc when needed.

 

My main router that is also the main dhcp server does not support pxe. However, I do have a second router with ddwrt with the sole purpose of providing the vpn server. I will be setting up that router as a second dhcp server (with a delay) to only forward tftp requests. The tftp server will run on either an ubuntu vm i have, or in unraid as a plugin (someone just posted a tftp plugin on these forums the other day)

 

This is as far as I could figure out. The rest was too complicated for me to figure out in terms of boot images and such. I am still reading and trying to put bits and pieces together to make sense, but I wanted to ask you guys, is what I am trying to accomplish even possible?

 

Thanks

Haha, well. . . made some headway until I hit a huge roadblock lol

 

I set up the dhcp to forward to tftp on the ddwrt router

I set up the tftp server on the ubuntu vm

I set up gpxe

in the pxelinux config, I set up the kernel as memboot from syslinux

and for initrd I pointed to the windows xen img through http

 

When I net booted the pc, it tried to download the entire 40GB windows image into ram :-)

 

Well, needless to say it errored out when it ran ouf of ram as I do not have more than 40GB

 

I see a lot of references to appending the boot environment through nfs. But they always refer to a boot directory already mounted. Should I be trying to set up the win img as the boot environment through nfs? Am I on the right path?

 

Thanks

Let me ask this, are you planning on then putting unRAID on your openelec machine and then making openelec and Windows VMs (openelec local to the drive, Windows over the network)?

Let me ask this, are you planning on then putting unRAID on your openelec machine and then making openelec and Windows VMs (openelec local to the drive, Windows over the network)?

 

No

 

I already have unraid running on my server. It already has two VMs set up: ubuntu and windows.

 

What I'm trying to do is run the (unraid xen) windows vm over the network on my openelec machine

 

 

I made some more headway. Realizing memboot and memdisk is NOT the right way to do it, I started looking into iscsi

 

I set up an iscsi target in ubuntu for my xen windows vm

 

Tested mounting it using win 7's built in iscsi initiator. All is good.

 

I tried gpxelinux.0 on the ddwrt router

and in the pxelinux.cfg I put in sanboot.c32 as the kernel and then appended the iscsi info

 

I just could not get it to work. It kept getting stuck at booting from iscsi

 

Then I switched to ipxe (supposed to be newer)

 

I followed the directions for building my own undionly.kpxe with an embedded custom script that gets dhcp and then issues the sanboot iscsi command

I set the ddwrt to point to the custom built undionly.kpxe

 

I got windows boot screen

 

I saw the logo and spinning dots for a few minutes. Then I got a blue screen saying something went wron and that it is restarting. (Same thing happens on every boot)

 

Yuck

Forgive me as I'm really having a hard time understanding what you are trying to accomplish.  A VM is a virtual machine that runs under a hypervisor (like Xen). What hypervisor is running on your box that you currently have open elec running on?  Your thread is titled "PXE boot a VM".  What it sounds like is you want to be able to multiboot your htpc running open elec today and you want pxe to help you do that. What I don't understand is what this has to do with VMs.

 

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My windows vm that is set up on unraid is basically an img file that contains the entire filesystem, complete with the MBR. It is the image of a virtual drive.

 

I can load that image as a "VM" utilizing the Xen hypervisor in unraid 6

 

Or. . .

 

I can make that image file available through iscsi or nfs, etc. as if it was a virtual drive and boot from it. Then it is no longer a vm, nothing is being virtualized, but instead the computer is booting from a remote virtual hard drive. And that remote virtual drive is the same image file as above.

 

In the second scenario described, there is no hypervisor because the computer is directly booting from the image file that is essentially network mounted.

 

So I have one image file that contains the windows OS, and I can either boot it as a VM under Xen, or I can boot straight into it from another computer through iscsi

My windows vm that is set up on unraid is basically an img file that contains the entire filesystem, complete with the MBR. It is the image of a virtual drive.

 

I can load that image as a "VM" utilizing the Xen hypervisor in unraid 6

 

Or. . .

 

I can make that image file available through iscsi or nfs, etc. as if it was a virtual drive and boot from it. Then it is no longer a vm, nothing is being virtualized, but instead the computer is booting from a remote virtual hard drive. And that remote virtual drive is the same image file as above.

 

In the second scenario described, there is no hypervisor because the computer is directly booting from the image file that is essentially network mounted.

 

So I have one image file that contains the windows OS, and I can either boot it as a VM under Xen, or I can boot straight into it from another computer through iscsi

 

Did not know that. My only experience with PXE was with Citrix Provisioning Server and virtual desktops.  I knew you could provision to bare metal, but didn't know that you could use a VMs image to do so. Very cool.

 

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Well, I keep finding guides and youtube videos where people are doing it.

 

Unfortunately I could only go as far as getting the windows logo. After a couple minutes, it says an error occurred and restarts.

 

I tried win 8 by the way, maybe I would have better luck with win 7 (all the youtube videos had win 7) but I gave up for now

Well, I keep finding guides and youtube videos where people are doing it.

 

Unfortunately I could only go as far as getting the windows logo. After a couple minutes, it says an error occurred and restarts.

 

I tried win 8 by the way, maybe I would have better luck with win 7 (all the youtube videos had win 7) but I gave up for now

 

Oh BTW, one thing I do remember from my days doing citrix stuff with PXE, I remember that you're supposed to set option 66 and 67 on your dhcp server for this to work I think.  Also did you stumble upon this same article:

 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/dominikheinz/archive/2011/03/18/dhcp-amp-pxe-basics.aspx

 

Just curious...

 

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