Re: CTF: UEFI HTTP boot support

> On Tue., Jun. 16, 2020, 8:35 a.m. Rodney W. Grimes, <
> freebsd-rwg_at_gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> 
> > > I've been trying out FreeBSD with raspberry Pi4 (4GB) and wanted to see
> > > what the state of HTTP BOOT is in FreeBSD, so I bumped into this!
> > >
> > > I'm curious if it should be possible to point to a img/iso directly (I
> > > tried to use the img.xz unpacked it and make it available on a local web
> > > server and that didn't seem to work for me)  but maybe thats cause those
> > > images miss something, so arm64 aside does that work for amd64? I.E.
> > using
> > > the bootonly.iso?
> >
> > One problem you run into in attemtping this is even if you get an
> > image downloaded and started that image is being provided by some
> > memory device driver that emulates some type of iso device.
> > FreeBSD does not have a driver for that device so once the kernel
> > gets to the point of mounting its root file system it falls on
> > its face with a mountroot failure.
> >
> 
> I donno what you are talking about Rodney, frankly! You information might
> be way outdated, like 15 years outdated. :) FreeBSD comes with very decent
> compressed image support in MD(4)+geom_uzip, which could be just UFS
> snapshot or something created with mkimg utility. That said image could be
> then either loaded after the kernel or embedded into one. Using this
> approach we deploy our systems here, both kernel and all root + python
> interpreter + custom gui installer fit into 40mb ISO but apart from loader
> bits it's just two files.

Max,
	Let me try explain what this user is actually experienceing,
and that is taking a box stock linux distro, sticking it on a webserver
and using PXE/HTTP booting to a running system.  FreeBSD can not
achieve that today WITHOUT some additional work.  All that
stuff like UFS snapshot, mkimg utlity, embeding the image is a ton
of work compared to what others are doing.

This person probably does not even have a running FreeBSD box to do
any of your suggested solutions on.

So give me some credit, I have only been doing "diskless" since 1982,
and actually do exactly what the OP is doing with Esxi, Ubuntu, Windows
Installers, etc.  Just my choice of protocol at the PXE layer is NFS
instead of HTTP, but my config files can do HTTP with 1 variable change
and point a web server at the root of my boot images tree.

I even have a menu entry that sends me off to:
	https://netboot.xyz/

Regards,
Rod

> 
> -Max
> 
> 
> > >
> > > And on the other hand is there any doc on how to set up dhcp/http
> > specific
> > > to FreeBSD similar to https://en.opensuse.org/UEFI_HTTPBoot_Server_Setup
> > ?
> >
> > Since Linux uses this idea of a kernel payload and an initrd payload
> > to boot with it is much easier to get these 2 things over the network
> > and then have a workable system.  FreeBSD does not have the initrd
> > payload and that complicates things, you need a functionaly filesystem
> > avaliable at the end of kernel initilization.
> > >
> > > I looked into https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/network-diskless.html
> > > but that doesn't seem to be up to date (or at least it focuses only on
> > PXE
> > > and TFTP).
> >
> > Yes, old but workable.  I have a more advanced system that supports NFS
> > booting using NFS support in PXE.  The only thing done via tftp is to
> > upgrade the PXE running on the client to one that speaks NFS, then the
> > kernel is loaded via NFS and the root file system is later provided
> > via NFS.  The use of NFS provides very fast boots, and I do not need
> > a web server to do it :-).
> >
> > > For clarification my ultimate goal is to use a few pi4's as "thin
> > clients",
> > > so eventually I will have to setup an image of the system with the needed
> > > software (freerdp) but for starters I just wanted to check if pointing
> > > directly to a img/iso would work and that does not seem to be the case.
> >
> > I would strongly suggest use of NFS instead of trying to provide an
> > ISO image, as you no longer need to store the ISO in memory on the
> > client box, and with a pi4 your already memory contrained.
> >
> > > Thanks.
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > --
> > Rod Grimes
> > rgrimes_at_freebsd.org
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> >
> >

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes_at_freebsd.org