pxe installation successfully but reboot get operating system not found

[yixuanh]

Hello,

I used xCAT to automatically install redhat6/suse11/windows on esxi5.1 which I create following virtual machines: 20g disk datastore1=scsi, memory 2048, 2 vcpu.

I have got successfully result before, which I can install os and boot them successfully with xCAT PXE solution(xnba, which used ipxe instead of legacy pxe rom).

I dont think there has different behavior when I create virtual machines. However, I will get 'operating system not found ' issue again and again.

Once more, when I enable "failed boot recovery" at VM Setting, after 10s retry, it can boot into redhat system(I believe for other systems).

So I wanna to know the root cause. How can I fix it? I don't want to set that workaround.

I will attach my log and vmx to refer.

I have two vms, both used lsi sas controller, however, I also used lsi scsi(parallel).

Thanks,

Eugene

[yixuanh]

hello guys,

any idea for my issue?

what reason sometimes is okay, but other time is not.

[dariusd]

Hi Eugene, and welcome to the VMware Communities!

Your VM's configuration has:

   bios.bootDeviceClasses = allow:net

which will prevent it from booting from a hard disk.  You need to remove that configuration option if you want your VM to be able to boot from an OS deployed onto a local hard disk.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[yixuanh]

Hello Darius，

Thanks for your reply. I have removed that line, but problem still happened. For xCAT, it called perl-sdk to create vm, vm properties i have pasted in previous.

[dariusd]

Can you please attach the latest vmware.log from an attempt to boot this VM?

What is the bootloader that was deployed onto the local hard disk?  GRUB, GRUB2, LILO, ELILO, or something else?

Cheers,

--

Darius

[yixuanh]

Hello Darius,

For RHEL6, I believe should be grub2, same as sles11.

For windows, it should use bootmgr, not sure about.

I have attached new vmware.log.

Today I just do a little test as you mentioned allow:net, when I remove it, and power off, power on, it seems can boot into hdd.

But when we do PXE booted, we need set net boot first. So any idea to solve permanently.

We want to that pxe install successfully, boot from hdd successfully.

Thanks,

Eugene

[dariusd]

If you create the VM with a blank HDD, in the default configuration it should automatically PXE boot once it discovers that the HDD is not bootable.  Once the OS is deployed via PXE, the VM should start booting from its hard disk automatically.

In other words, you should not need to restrict the boot device at all to achieve what you are aiming for.  You should not need any bios.bootDeviceClasses configuration.  Try configuring xCAT so that that option is never set at all.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[cipherpixel]

Hi,

I have a similar issue with the operating system not found.

Below is what I get in console when running the VM.

PXE-E51: No DHCP or proxyDHCP offers were received.

PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.

Operating System not found

Attached is the vmware.log

Does anybody know what the problem is?

Thank you very much for your help.

[dariusd]

Hi cipherpixel, and welcome to the VMware Communities!

Are you expecting the virtual machine to boot over the network using PXE?  Have you installed an operating system onto the virtual machine's hard disk?  I see that the virtual CD/DVD drive is connected to the image at /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/linux.iso , but note that that disc image is not bootable -- it only contains VMware Tools, not a full operating system.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[cipherpixel]

Are you expecting the virtual machine to boot over the network using PXE?

- yes

Have you installed an operating system onto the virtual machine's hard disk?

- I actually thought that connecting CD/DVD to the linux.iso is enough to handle this.

- If this is not enough, can I install the OS via sphere client?

I'm kind of new to this ESXi stuff so I might be missing something here.

Thanks

[dariusd]

Hi again cipherpixel,

You should download an .iso image of your preferred Linux distro from the distro's website, upload it to your datastore, and then you should be able to attach the .iso image to the VM using the vSphere Client, and power on the VM to boot the OS installer.

If you have any trouble getting it to work, you should feel free to start a separate discussion thread in this forum... The thread we're using now was for a specific problem which is unrelated to your issues with getting started.

Thanks!

--

Darius

[cipherpixel]

Hi Darius,

Thank your for the assistance. I'll download and try to load the iso image and see if that would work.