From owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 12 02:30:34 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 93A62106566C for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:30:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lstewart@freebsd.org) Received: from lauren.room52.net (lauren.room52.net [210.50.193.198]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 036618FC15 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:30:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lawrence1.loshell.room52.net (unknown [59.167.184.191]) by lauren.room52.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id EB39C7E841 for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:13:27 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <4BC281C7.8040908@freebsd.org> Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:13:27 +1000 From: Lawrence Stewart User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-AU; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100405 Thunderbird/3.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Need help pxebooting FreeBSD under virtualbox-ose-3.1.6_2 X-BeenThere: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Development of Emulators of other operating systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:30:34 -0000 Hi all, As the subject suggests, I'm having issues getting PXE booting working. I have a working PXE/NFS setup (verified using a physical machine on the LAN) that doesn't work in vbox. The vm is set to use bridged networking mode and the PCnet-FAST III adapter type. I've experimented with various permutations of FreeBSD/Freebsd 64bit guest OS version, IO APIC, PAE/NX, VT-x and nested paging, all to no avail. The pxeboot code I'm predominantly testing with is compiled from a recent version of head. I have also tried pxeboots from the 8-CURRENT and 8-STABLE eras. The vm starts up, pulls the pxeboot file via TFTP and then errors out with the message "TFTP download complete, but\nUnable to load file." I've tested on Windows XP vbox and it gets a bit further, successfully running the pxeboot code, but craps out when it gets to loading the kernel. I tested with both recent head and 8-stable kernels and it just freezes when when the '|' character shows up and is about to start spinning. If I could get the FreeBSD vbox vm to the point where it too can boot our pxeboot code, that would be a great step. I found the thread at [1] and tried the suggestions in the linked thread. Applying the etherboot patch to etherboot distributed with vbox makes no difference at all, and Kib's patched pxeboot code [2] kind of manages to successfully run after the same "Unable to load file" message is printed, but is completely broken, spewing messages about "netboot: couldn't probe pxenet0" and "pxe_open: netif_open() failed" to the console. I'm guessing the trick is somehow related to the vbox PXE boot rom not interacting well with our pxeboot code, but I have no idea how to resolve this. Any words of wisdom on how to get this working? Anyone even managed to successfully pxeboot FreeBSD in vbox? Cheers, Lawrence [1] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-emulation/2009-September/006806.html [2] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-emulation/2007-April/003509.html