85 replies to this topic

[erwan.l]

Hi Andy,
Very good analysis indeed.
Playing with iSCSI for some weeks now, I really much appreciated the fact that starting with Vista, iSCSI was natively supported, including during booting and even during installing.

That's why, although there are probably some nice interesting thing to do with BartPE and iSCSI, I believe it would be more efficient and easier with builds based on newer operating systems.

One thing I really would like to do is definitely to get away with the MS tftp client when it comes to network boot.
The SDI pxelinux tftp client is a nice alternative (fast, can compress and use http).

But ISCSI remains the quickest and more reliable (to my mind) way of network booting.
Some may argue NFS as an alternative but in windows world, forget about it

Also, I feel bartpe is best a livecd or iso over the network to repair a faulty computer/server.
Therefore iSCSI is not maybe a great added value then.
With iSCSI I personally want to achive diskless computer (for end users or for boot on san servers).

Regards,
Erwan.

[erwan.l]

One more test :

I have one thinclient (brand neoware) where a XP embedded is running.
I logged on the device, cloned the disk (a flash chip on board).
I used that img file in vmware, installed the iscsi boot.
I am now able to boot that img over iscsi within a few secs as the img file is 256MB and could have my thin clients boot on it (one unique image with EWF on or one image per mac address).

That is another practical example of what to do with boot on iscsi.



/Erwan

[bilou_gateux]

Root-path is "iscsi:192.168.1.100:tcp:3260:0:test".
Adapt the ip to your iscsi target (server).
Also adapt test to your iscsi target name.

The error was iscsi target name.
"d530usdt" is the netbios name of my server box running StarWind.
changed to iscsi target name and now trying next step.

[ktp]

To clarify things a little (at least for me having some difficulties to understand and try to experiment
from erwan.l's quick how-to):

From erwan.l:

Terminology:
> -on one side you have a server acting as a iscsi target (=server) and also as a PXE server (=dhcp+tftp+gPXE)
> -on the other side you have a diskless client computer booting windows (=iscsi initiator)

> Steps:
> 1.Setup pxe server with gpxe
> 2.Setup iscsi target
> 3.Install new OS, or transfer existing OS, to a volume that will be shared over iscsi.
> 4.Install iscsi boot support
> 5.Boot over iscsi !
> 6.Summary :

This is not very clear for me which step has to be done on what machine. Following is my understandings,
please confirm or infirm:

From Server Machine = PXE/TFTP server = iSCSI target (= my workstation running VMWare)
a=> install/setup PXE/TFTP server (tftpd32 http://tftpd32.jounin.net/ or IPtools http://erwan.l.free.fr/)
b=> install StarWind iSCSI target http://www.rocketdiv...n.com/wind.html
c=> install iSCSI boot support (MS iSCSI Initiator) http://etherboot.org...oot/winnt_iscsi
d=> install OS or transfer OS to a volume that will be shared over iSCSI

From Test Machine = client = iSCSI initiator (VMware virtual machine, diskless): no installation needed
=> just boot over PXE = iSCSI since PXE server use gpxelinux.0 then sanboot.c32 in \root\pxelinux.cfg\default

So what is confusing is that the client = iSCSI initiator, but I understand that there is no software to be
installed. The so called MS iSCSI initiator software (iSCSI boot support) is a software to be installed on the
server (PXE, iSCSI target) !

All the a, b, c and d steps above are done in the server (iSCSI target).

Are my understandings correct ?

[erwan.l]

So what is confusing is that the client = iSCSI initiator, but I understand that there is no software to be
installed. The so called MS iSCSI initiator software (iSCSI boot support) is a software to be installed on the
server (PXE, iSCSI target) !

All the a, b, c and d steps above are done in the server (iSCSI target).

Are my understandings correct ?

Hi ktp,
The iscsi initiator is a client side software and therefore should be installed in the O.S (winxp or w2k3) you want to run thru iscsi (and therefore served on your iscsi target).
The initiator is not needed on the iscsi target.

Note than you can go without the iscsi initiator installation with windows 2008 and windows 7 (vista also I believe) as this feature is now builtin by default.
You can install directly to an iscsi target with these new O.S without having to clone your O.S first.

Regards,
Erwan.

[ktp]

The iscsi initiator is a client side software and therefore should be installed in the O.S (winxp or w2k3) you want to run thru iscsi (and therefore served on your iscsi target).
The initiator is not needed on the iscsi target.

Initially (not having your advice), I installed the (MS) iSCSI initiator software to the host (iSCSI target). Effectively this is not needed for booting iSCSI, but I found it useful to be able to "mount" the iSCSI disk and update it.

Then using gPXE with built-in iSCSI support, the thin client (diskless station) just uses BIOS PXE boot + gPXE provided by the server (iSCSI target, gpexelinux.0, sanboot.32) and boots successfully. But... I got BSOD 0x7B, for booting either full XP or BartPE.

So I conclude that iSCSI as you said is needed, and has to be installed inside the OS to be booted from iSCSI. In other words, the disk image in the iSCSI target must contains iSCSI initiator inside the OS (to be installed if XP, built-in if Vista, Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7).

Could you confirm that the BSOD 0x7B was due to lack of iSCSI initator ?

Note: I had difficulties booting iSCSI, connection timeout. After long investigations, I found out that this was due to XP firewall blocking port 3260. You need either to allow StarwindService application, or to allow port 3260 TCP. Once this port is allowed, everything boots very well!

[erwan.l]

Then using gPXE with built-in iSCSI support, the thin client (diskless station) just uses BIOS PXE boot + gPXE provided by the server (iSCSI target, gpexelinux.0, sanboot.32) and boots successfully. But... I got BSOD 0x7B, for booting either full XP or BartPE.

So I conclude that iSCSI as you said is needed, and has to be installed inside the OS to be booted from iSCSI. In other words, the disk image in the iSCSI target must contains iSCSI initiator inside the OS (to be installed if XP, built-in if Vista, Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7).

Could you confirm that the BSOD 0x7B was due to lack of iSCSI initator ?

For BartPE, I am not too sure that iscsi is supported.
For XP, I mostly sure that it is due to the fact that you did not install iscsi boot support before cloning (see here http://etherboot.org...oot/winnt_iscsi for how to).

Regards,
Erwan.

[ktp]

I installed the iSCSI initiator to the OS and update the disk image.
The BSOD 0x7B is unfortunately still active for XP boot (I tested under VMware).
On real machine, the client machine hangs at XP logo (after loading agp440.sys).

Some details:
I have an USB HDD that can be booted OK from the client (iSCSI initiator) machine.
I convert this HDD to a iSCSI disk image managed by Starwind.
Then the thin client boots over iSCSI requesting this disk image. So it should not either hang or get BSOD 0x7B. Maybe inside VMWare do I need vmscsi driver ?

[erwan.l]

I installed the iSCSI initiator to the OS and update the disk image.
The BSOD 0x7B is unfortunately still active for XP boot (I tested under VMware).
On real machine, the client machine hangs at XP logo (after loading agp440.sys).

Some details:
I have an USB HDD that can be booted OK from the client (iSCSI initiator) machine.
I convert this HDD to a iSCSI disk image managed by Starwind.
Then the thin client boots over iSCSI requesting this disk image. So it should not either hang or get BSOD 0x7B. Maybe inside VMWare do I need vmscsi driver ?

Indeed for vmware, you need to add the scsi drivers.
See here : http://erwan.labalec.fr/clonedisk/, tip 1.
I am not sure thus that you can move a host to a different target at the same time as moving to iscsi since the nic ID will change and therefore will prevent the iscsi boot to run on xp (should not be a pb for vista and up).
The normal sequence should be : move to vmware, install iscsi boot, move to iscsi.

If you stick to the same host, installing the iscsi initator should be enough.
Make sure thus, you go for the iscsi initiator with boot support : run the san boot configurator (after the iscsi initiator installation) to link the iscsi boot process to your nic (http://etherboot.org...csi_sanbootconf).

Regards,
Erwan.

Edit : I checked my how to (http://erwan.labalec.fr/iscsi/) and indeed, the san boot configurator part was not obvious.
It was indicated here http://www.etherboot...oot/winnt_iscsi but how ever I did update my web page as well.

[ktp]

@erwan.l
I still have BSOD 0x7B after booting my XP over iSCSI.

Summary of my experimentation:
- I have one XP SP3 VMware virtual machine, booting OK, VMWare tools installed (so should be vmscsi driver) + MS iSCSI initiator installed.
- From CloneDisk in http://www.boot-land...iew=getlastpost
I make a disk file image of the XP SP3 virtual machine, then I use this disk file image as the device for Starwind.
- I create a new VMWare virtual machine, 512 MB, XP type, diskless.
- I boot the diskless virtual machine, it boots PXE, receives the sanboot.c32 from PXE/TFTPD server then starts booting (blank horizaontal progression bar, then XP logo), then I got BSOD 0x7B.

How I can fix the BSOD 0x7B problem? Am I missing something?

[erwan.l]

@erwan.l
I still have BSOD 0x7B after booting my XP over iSCSI.

Summary of my experimentation:
- I have one XP SP3 VMware virtual machine, booting OK, VMWare tools installed (so should be vmscsi driver) + MS iSCSI initiator installed.
- From CloneDisk in http://www.boot-land...iew=getlastpost
I make a disk file image of the XP SP3 virtual machine, then I use this disk file image as the device for Starwind.
- I create a new VMWare virtual machine, 512 MB, XP type, diskless.
- I boot the diskless virtual machine, it boots PXE, receives the sanboot.c32 from PXE/TFTPD server then starts booting (blank horizaontal progression bar, then XP logo), then I got BSOD 0x7B.

How I can fix the BSOD 0x7B problem? Am I missing something?

it should work indeed.
that is the way I do it.

some stupid questions :
-you do launch clonedisk from the vm xp, dont you?
and you dump it to some external location (shared folder on the network, usb disk, etc)?
-you do launch the san boot configurator after the iscsi initiator installation, to enable the nic driver early in the boot process?
-you do use the iscsi initator with boot support not the standard iscsi initiator setup?
-you use the same vmware host before and after? (worksation, vmware server, esx?)
-could it be that the network configuration is different before and after (same nic, same setup / bridged?)

at least we can validate your iscsi target and you pxe boot.
courage, you are some bytes away from boot on san

regards,
Erwan.

edit : to check that your dumped image is ok, make a vmdk pointing to it (from clonedisk) and test it in vmware.

[ktp]

@erwan.l

> -you do launch clonedisk from the vm xp, dont you?
Yes.

> and you dump it to some external location (shared folder on the network, usb disk, etc)?
Yes, I use VMWare shared folders (very convenient).

> -you do launch the san boot configurator after the iscsi initiator installation, to enable the nic driver early in the boot process?
Yes.

> -you do use the iscsi initator with boot support not the standard iscsi initiator setup?
How can I check this?
I follow this:
Adding iSCSI boot support to Microsoft Windows
http://etherboot.org...oot/winnt_iscsi
And install under XP the Initiator-2.08-boot-build3825-x86chk.exe
then I run setup.bat from:
Installing the Windows SAN Boot Configurator
http://etherboot.org...csi_sanbootconf
Anyhow, I test the same procedure with Windows 7 (normally iSCSI initiator built-in, so I do not install anything else).
And still BSOD 0x7B.

> -you use the same vmware host before and after? (worksation, vmware server, esx?)
Yes, I only has one instance and same VMWare workstation

> -could it be that the network configuration is different before and after (same nice, same setup / bridged?)
Should not be, since I clone (clonedisk) and boot from it over iSCSI.

Currently this small stop code 0x7B prevents me to fully enjoy booting over iSCSI :-).
I already had my first joy when it boots iSCSI and when I saw for the first time XP/Windows 7 logo booting over iSCSI (after spending everal days to debug then to find out that port 3260 is blocked by XP firewall!).

[erwan.l]

Currently this small stop code 0x7B prevents me to fully enjoy booting over iSCSI :-).
I already had my first joy when it boots iSCSI and when I saw for the first time XP/Windows 7 logo booting over iSCSI (after spending everal days to debug then to find out that port 3260 is blocked by XP firewall!).

About the firewall, it could be that some others tcp/udp ports are needed and that the firewall messes up the iscsi process.
Can you disable it for testing?

Also, it could be that the san boot batch fails (i have seen that before) thus not enabling the iSCSI Boot Driver.
Launch it from the command line and make sure it looks like this :

>setup.bat
iSCSI Boot Driver Installation
==============================

Marking "NDIS" service as boot-start
Marking "Tcpip" service as boot-start
..."Tcpip" depends on "IPSec"
Marking "IPSec" service as boot-start
Marking "iScsiPrt" service as boot-start
Marking "PSched" service as boot-start
..."PSched" depends on "Gpc"
Marking "Gpc" service as boot-start
Found NIC "Intel® PRO/1000 MT Mobile Connection"
Marking "E1000" service as boot-start
Installing from "C:\partage\sanbootconf-latest\sanbootconf-0.9.2.1\bin\iscsiboot
.inf"
Updating driver for hardware ID "ROOT\iscsiboot"
iSCSI Boot Driver installed successfully

In parallel, if cloning to iscsi is difficult right now, you can also try direct installt to iscsi (since you have windows 7).
That is by far the cleanest method as your OS is from scratch built on iscsi and will therefore not bother you with 0x7b since it is iscsi aware from day 1.
see here : http://erwan.labalec.fr

/erwan

[ktp]

@erwan.l

> About the firewall, it could be that some others tcp/udp ports are needed and that the firewall messes up the iscsi process.
> Can you disable it for testing?

I disabled it but same BSOD 0x7B occurred.

Following is the output from my setup.bat:
---
sanbootconf-0.9.2.1>setup
iSCSI Boot Driver Installation
==============================

Marking "NDIS" service as boot-start
Marking "Tcpip" service as boot-start
..."Tcpip" depends on "IPSec"
Marking "IPSec" service as boot-start
Marking "iScsiPrt" service as boot-start
Could not open "PSched": 2
Found NIC "VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter"
Marking "vmxnet" service as boot-start
Installing from "C:\tmp\sanbootconf-0.9.2.1\bin\iscsiboot.inf"
Updating driver for hardware ID "ROOT\iscsiboot"
iSCSI Boot Driver installed successfully
----

Is the PSched return code 2 the problem?

[erwan.l]

@erwan.l

Is the PSched return code 2 the problem?

Psched stands for "Packet Scheduler Miniport".
I would have thought that this is a default component (a driver).
I am surprised that it is missing : do you have some sort of stripped xp (nlite or else?).
That could be the issue indeed although the batch states success at the end.

/Erwan

[ktp]

@erwan.l

You are right, the XP SP3 I tried was nLited with some functions stripped out. I will try with a full XP again. But the Windows 7 had same problem (full, no vLite) so maybe I have to try iSCSI from day 1 as you said for Windows 7.

[erwan.l]

@erwan.l

You are right, the XP SP3 I tried was nLited with some functions stripped out. I will try with a full XP again. But the Windows 7 had same problem (full, no vLite) so maybe I have to try iSCSI from day 1 as you said for Windows 7.

oki, about nlite, indeed, it probably removed some necessary components for iscsi boot.

today, i have a xp (vm) booting on iscsi.
it was previously a regular vm on which i applied iscsi setup.

i also have a w2k3 (vm) booting on iscsi.
it was originally a virtualpc image on which i installed the vmscsi drivers, and then converted to vmware (with clonedisk).
on top of that i installed iscsi boot.

i also have a w2k8 (vm).
after standard installation in vmware to a monolithic file (vmdk pointing to an image file), i moved the img file to my iscsi target on booted straight on it.

these 3 images will either boot straight from vm or thru iscsi.

these 3 images i can also boot them up in Qemu by ensuring this :
-http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082 for error 0x7b
-latest qemus bios (from ubuntu package) to avoid acpi issues with w2k8/vista

with w2k8, i have also tested direct installation to iscsi (http://erwan.labalec.fr).

/Erwan

[ktp]

@erwan.l

Finally success booting my full XP SP3 over iSCSI !
The speed using VMware is impressive (Gigabit Ethernet).
Thank you a lot.

Next step is to try booting Vista and Windows 7 over iSCSI.

[erwan.l]

@erwan.l

Finally success booting my full XP SP3 over iSCSI !
The speed using VMware is impressive (Gigabit Ethernet).
Thank you a lot.

Next step is to try booting Vista and Windows 7 over iSCSI.

Oki, I am glad it works for you
I also used this opportunity to add or clarify some details in my procedure.

I believe I did play with vista and iscsi once but dont have any notes.
Dont hesitate to share it here.
Same goes with windows 7 : I just got it and will test the direct installation to iscsi.
On your side, if you have any feedback on transfering an existing windows 7 to iscsi, share it !

Thanks for the feedback,
Erwan.

[erwan.l]

About Windows 7, I did install it to a monolithic file (vmdk pointing to img).
This is what I did so far :

-Set the miscsi service as auto ->mandatory
-Setup the firewall for iscsi (in my case disabled)->mandatory
-Add my target to the iscsi initiator -> not sure this is mandatory but at least you can test that you initiator and target talk to each other.

These 3 steps were sucessful for my w2k8 system.

So far it does not seem to enable boot over iscsi yet for win7 :
I get to the windows logo and finally end with a 0x7b again

Will update when successful.

/Erwan

[Michel Belleau]

oki, about nlite, indeed, it probably removed some necessary components for iscsi boot.

Did you have any chance booting Windows XP with that nlite'd version?

I'm struggling with the same problems, but would like to keep that particular version of windows for my SAN boot.

Would you mind sharing your list of services with me, so that I can see what is missing on my installation for the dreaded STOP 0x7b to stop showing up ?

Thanks a lot,

Michel

[erwan.l]

Did you have any chance booting Windows XP with that nlite'd version?

I'm struggling with the same problems, but would like to keep that particular version of windows for my SAN boot.

Would you mind sharing your list of services with me, so that I can see what is missing on my installation for the dreaded STOP 0x7b to stop showing up ?

Thanks a lot,

Michel

Hi Michel,
Never booted an nlited version with iscsi.
However, if you manage to run successfully the san boot configurator, then you should be ok.
I believe that the "Packet Scheduler Miniport" is stripped by default by nlite but should be kept (may be part of the QOS stuffs).

That is an interesting challenge thus : keep up updated.

On a regular system, install ms iscsi, then the san boot configurator, then look at the drivers / services installed (and their dependencies).

Regards,
Erwan.

[erwan.l]

Hello There,

Just a quick update on my quest to boot windows over iscsi.
I managed to boot over iscsi an nlite version of XP (one image of 256mb).
Question was asked to me about nlite and iscsi on that forum some weeks ago : now we know it works

Regards,
Erwan.

[Michel Belleau]

I managed to boot over iscsi an nlite version of XP (one image of 256mb).
Question was asked to me about nlite and iscsi on that forum some weeks ago : now we know it works

What kind of network card are you using?
I tried many times (nlite'd version and "normal" pro version too) without any success.

I have Intel Pro 1000 GT Desktop Gigabit Ethernet cards.

SAN boot configuration seems to work ok and does not display error messages, althought I get the STOP error on boot.

I can see the iSCSI disk real fine in the "Manage Computer" applet.

[erwan.l]

What kind of network card are you using?
I tried many times (nlite'd version and "normal" pro version too) without any success.

I have Intel Pro 1000 GT Desktop Gigabit Ethernet cards.

SAN boot configuration seems to work ok and does not display error messages, althought I get the STOP error on boot.

I can see the iSCSI disk real fine in the "Manage Computer" applet.

Hello Michel,
Any network card will do.
Do you install the scsi boot version? then run the san boot configurator?
Did you set fix ip or dhcp?
At what stage do you get a bsod 0x7b?
At you running the iscsi image on the same hardware where the image was made?

Regards,
Erwan.