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I have a VMWare VM (ESXi 6.5, VM version 13) that I want to image over the network. For the past several years we have been using (with much success) a TFTP server containing a PXE image. Now I want to move to using UEFI and have the UEFI client get the image using HTTPS.

  1. On the VMWare VM I changed "Boot Options|Firmware" from "BIOS" to "EFI".
  2. Added an HTTPS endpoint to the image server so that the UEFI client can download the UEFI image (https://example.com/ldlinux.e64).
  3. Changed the DHCP setting for the client from sending "filename" with value "pxeclient.0" to instead send https://example.com/ldlinux.e64.

When I boot the VM the EFI boot manager starts but I see this error:

_unsuccessful.bell (Unsupported option) 0:0)
PXE-E23: Client received TFTP error from server.inux.64

Sniffing the network I see that UEFI client is still trying to access the TFTP service rather than the HTTPS service. What do I need to do to convince the UEFI client to download the iamge pointed to by the URL rather than continuing to use TFTP?

UPDATE: Sniffing for the DHCP traffic on our DHCP server I see that the VM guest is sending a DHCP request with Option 60, Vendor Class ID set to PXEClient:Arch:.... The UEFI specification for HTTP Boot says that this value should be HTTPClient:Arch:.... Thus, the issue boils down to how to get the VM guest system to send its DHCP request with Option 60 set to "HTTPClient".

user35042
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1 Answers1

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you have several issues;

  1. VMware UEFI does not support HTTP Boot

  2. If it would you are pointing to boot ldlinux.e64 which is not a PE UEFI application but an ELF component of Pxelinux. it will never boot.

Finally how much faster do you think an HTTP boot capture will be compared with a regular PXE capture where only the initial Boot.wim is TFTP transfer with let say windowsize=16 and then a MS share for the bulk of the capture? the gain is not much; make it simple.

Pat
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