Hello everyone!

I'm currently putting iPXE on a flash drive as a way to PXE boot from a device without an internal network card, but it looks like iPXE is not detecting my USB NIC, an ASIX Electronics Corp. AX88179 Gigabit Ethernet card. It says something along the lines of "no network cards found".

Does iPXE support USB NICs? Or would I have to recompile to include support for USB network cards?

I found this forum post and I was able to compile successfully, but the compiled file, when flashed to my flash drive, will not boot on the laptop or any other device.

Anyone have guidance on this? Thanks.

Anyone have guidance on this?

See the IRC response (where the same question was asked)

In reply to @alexrelis:matrix.org
Thank you!

The issue was that I had two regulated computer systems made by a niche vendor at work that I was tasked to re-image with SCCM, and while they supported PXE boot, they refused to boot UEFI images. We got in contact with the vendor, and as it turns out, the models we had were "prototypes" that never got support for booting UEFI over PXE, according to them.

That is when I found iPXE, and I figured I could just put iPXE on a flash drive to bypass the PXE ROM included with the system. That actually worked for one of them, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the other machine to get an IP from the DHCP server. Any time I ran the commands it would say this:

[TXE: 1 x "Network unreachable]
[TXE: 1 x "Operation not supported]

Even trying it with a static IP resulted in the same error.

I tried to use USB NIC cards, but none of them were even being detected. There was one USB NIC card we had that was officially supported, but it was USB-C and the computer only had a USB-A port. I brought home a USB-C to A adapter, but unfortunately it still did not detect the NIC card on the computer, even though I was able to get it booting with iPXE on a laptop with the exact same setup.

I then attempted to re-compile with specific flags. The first thing I tried was editing src/config/dhcp.hso that it had more time and attempts to do a DHCP discover request thinking it just needed more time to request an IP from the DHCP server, but giving it more time didn't change the outcome. I then tried compiling with intel drivers with debugging turned on, but the debugger didn't output any messages that coincided with the issue I was having.

After that, I simply gave up on trying iPXE on baremetal. I instead spun up a virtual machine with KVM with the help of virt-manager. I plug in a USB to SATA enclosure with a SATA HDD plugged in and passed it to the VM. I then passed through my NIC card with macvtap, then I passed through iPXE. I ran iPXE through the VM and successfully reimaged a machine to the SATA hard drive, then I ran a GNU Linux live USB on the computer with the SATA to USB enclosure connected and cloned the drive.

Unfortunately, as I was doing that, the hard drive started giving me the dreaded "Input/Output" error and would not copy the partition due to bad sectors. The drive failed as I was doing it!

I then set up Ventoy with a GNU Linux live ISO and enabled persistence with the Ventoy persistence plugin, installed QEMU/KVM and virt-manager on the persistent live environment and booted it directly on the system. Then I passed through the NIC card, internal SSD, and iPXE. From there I was able to PXE boot successfully and re-image directly to the machine's internal SSD.

The issue was that I had two regulated computer systems made by a niche vendor at work that I was tasked to re-image with SCCM, and while they supported PXE boot, they refused to boot UEFI images. We got in contact with the vendor, and as it turns out, the models we had were "prototypes" that never got support for booting UEFI over PXE, according to them.

That is when I found iPXE, and I figured I could just put iPXE on a flash drive to bypass the PXE ROM included with the system. That actually worked for one of them, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the other machine to get an IP from the DHCP server. Any time I ran the commands it would say this:

[TXE: 1 x "Network unreachable]
[TXE: 1 x "Operation not supported]

Even trying it with a static IP resulted in the same error.

I tried to use USB NIC cards, but none of them were even being detected. There was one USB NIC card we had that was officially supported, but it was USB-C and the computer only had a USB-A port. I brought home a USB-C to A adapter, but unfortunately it still did not detect the NIC card on the computer, even though I was able to get it booting with iPXE on a laptop with the exact same setup.

I then attempted to re-compile with specific flags. The first thing I tried was editing src/config/dhcp.hso that it had more time and attempts to do a DHCP discover request thinking it just needed more time to request an IP from the DHCP server, but giving it more time didn't change the outcome. I then tried compiling with intel drivers with debugging turned on, but the debugger didn't output any messages that coincided with the issue I was having.

After that, I simply gave up on trying iPXE on baremetal. I instead spun up a virtual machine with KVM with the help of virt-manager. I plug in a USB to SATA enclosure with a SATA HDD plugged in and passed it to the VM. I then passed through my NIC card with macvtap, then I passed through iPXE. I ran iPXE through the VM and successfully reimaged a machine to the SATA hard drive, then I ran a GNU Linux live USB on the computer with the SATA to USB enclosure connected and cloned the drive.

Unfortunately, as I was doing that, the hard drive started giving me the dreaded "Input/Output" error and would not copy the partition due to bad sectors. The drive failed as I was doing it!

I then set up Ventoy with a GNU Linux live ISO and enabled persistence with the Ventoy persistence plugin (so that the packages I install don't delete themselves when I reboot), installed QEMU/KVM and virt-manager on the persistent live environment and booted it directly on the system. Then I passed through the NIC card, internal SSD, and iPXE. From there I was able to PXE boot successfully and re-image directly to the machine's internal SSD.

In reply to @stappers:fosdem.org
(night in my timezone)

If I understand alexrelis correct, is the workaround:

ventoy.iso {
	GNU_Linux_Live.iso {
		QEMU/KVM {
			hardware_pass_through {
				bootloader {
					linux_kernel {
						access to NIC
						access to storage device
					}
				}
		}
	}
}

What I usual do:

ipxe.iso {
	ipxe_the_bootloader {
		access to NIC
	}
}

What an intermediate step could be:

ventoy.iso {
	ipxe.iso {
		ipxe_the_bootloader {
			access to NIC
		}
	}
}

That will reveal information how usable the ipxe.iso is.

In reply to @stappers:fosdem.org

If I understand alexrelis correct, is the workaround:

ventoy.iso {
	GNU_Linux_Live.iso {
		QEMU/KVM {
			hardware_pass_through {
				bootloader {
					linux_kernel {
						access to NIC
						access to storage device
					}
				}
		}
	}
}