# Booting FreeBSD ISO via PXE



## balanga (Mar 1, 2016)

I've been attempting to boot, via PXE, FreeBSD bootonly ISO's, and am somewhat encouraged by my observations. I'm hopeful that I can get it to work eventually. I do realise that mfsBSD exists and can be useful, but I've had problems... 

In my pxelinux.cfg I have:-


```
label freebsd 10 boot
    kernel memdisk
    append iso initrd=iso/FreeBSD-10.3-PRERELEASE-i386-20160127-r294913-bootonly.iso

label freebsd 11 boot
    kernel memdisk
    append iso initrd=iso/FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-i386-20160206-r295345-bootonly.iso
```

Both versions come up with the FreeBSD boot menu and display


```
/boot/kernel/kernel text=******* data=******* syms=*******
```

FreeBSD 10 then displays a message about 
	
	



```
corrupt symbol table
```
 and promptly reboots.

FreeBSD 11 displays

```
can't load file '/boot/kernel/kernel': input/output error
can't load file '/boot/kernel/kernel': input/output error
Error while including /boot/menu.rc, in the line:
menu-display
/
Hit [Enter} to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
```

I'm hoping that if I can find the right magic words at the *OK* prompt I might be able to get the beast to boot... 

Any advice greatly appreciated.


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## SirDice (Mar 1, 2016)

This might help: 30.8. Diskless Operation with PXE

Note, the ISOs are specifically designed to boot from a (physical) CD/DVD drive. You might have more luck with the memstick images but as far as I know you need to create a specific configuration to be able to boot successfully through PXE.


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## balanga (Mar 1, 2016)

SirDice said:


> This might help: 30.8. Diskless Operation with PXE
> 
> Note, the ISOs are specifically designed to boot from a (physical) CD/DVD drive. You might have more luck with the memstick images but as far as I know you need to create a specific configuration to be able to boot successfully through PXE.




The problem with using FreeBSD's pxeboot is that it isn't flexible. I'm trying to use pxelinux which is much more flexible by allowing you to select from a menu at boot time. I have  mfsBSD booting from pxelinux but it no longer is able to run BSDINSTALL because it has a hard coded pointer to FreeBSD 10.1 which is no longer available. I have tried rebuilding it as the means for doing so are availble here:-

http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/

Unfortunately I haven't succeeded yet. There are newer versions available but only for amd64, not i386 which I'm interested in.


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## SirDice (Mar 1, 2016)

It should be fairly easy to point bsdinstall(8) to the correct URL for 10.2:

```
BSDINSTALL_DISTSITE  URL from which the distribution files	should be
			  downloaded if	they are not already present in	the
			  directory defined by BSDINSTALL_DISTDIR.  This
			  should be a full path	to the files, including	archi-
			  tecture and release names. Most targets (e.g.	 auto
			  and jail) that prompt	for a FreeBSD mirror will skip
			  that step if this variable is	already	defined	in the
			  environment. Example:
			  ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/powerpc/powerpc64/9.1-RELEASE
```


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