Re: Network boot

[Daniel Kiper]

Hi Christopher,

Sorry for late reply but I am busy.

On Fri, Nov 02, 2018 at 12:32:09PM +0100, Christopher Lucas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've recently bought a 32-bit EFI Windows Tablet with 64-bit CPU. It doesn't
> have any Ethernet port so I'm using a USB-Ethernet adapter (rtl8153 chipset
> works with IPXE). I've successfully installed Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit via
> bootia32.efi on it and it works perfectly fine. Using GRUB2 (32-bit) allowed
> me to also install Arch Linux 2018.10.01 64-bit (just a test). I added an
> menu entry via a custom file in /etc/grub.d.
>
> So as internet was saying, GRUB2 is capable of cross-archicture. Now, I
> would like to network boot with GRUB2. The complex part of this, again, is
> booting a 64-bit image via 32-bit GRUB2. The server side is all setup and
> working (because it's already in production and used consistently for
> network booting).
>
> No luck so far, I've been able, from my 32-bit EFI, to connect to my server
> using a 32-bit .efi file by compiling ipxe github project in 32-bit but
> could not load the kernel (Normal because I'm in 32-bit).
>
> CODE :
>
> menuentry "IPXE 32-bit"{
>
>     chainloader i386.efi => made with make bin-i386-efi/ncm--ecm.efi
>
> }
>
> From GRUB2 (32-bit), I've tried to load a 64-bit .efi file but I get a
> error: unknown error (assume that it's because of architecture).
>
> CODE :
>
> menuentry "IPXE 32-bit"{
>
>     chainloader am64.efi => made with make bin-x86_64-efi/ncm--ecm.efi
>
> }
>
> I've also used netboot.xyz but no luck there either. (relaunches EFI or
> freezes)
>
> So I come to you! Is there a way with a 32-bit GRUB2 to load a 64-bit image
> that is located on my server? Help would be much appreciated. Hope I was
> clear enough.

Sorry, you cannot execute UEFI 32-bit PE binary on 64-bit UEFI platform and
vice versa. And this is not related to GRUB2 itself. It is general rule.

Daniel