Vbox EFI cannot read ISO filesystem => fixed in SVN/next 6.1.x

[Luiz Angelo Daros de Luca]

Hello,

As Vbox EFI does not include a network boot option, I was loading IPXE using a ISO image. However, since some recent update (6.1?), I can't read ISO anymore.

I noticed that there is a UDF driver and created a new CD using UDF:

genisoimage -udf -o /tmp/ipxe.udf /mnt/b/

And it worked as before. Please, fix ISO EFI support as UDF is much less used. And, if possible, add the necessary modules for directly booting from network.

[aeichner]

Thanks for the report, this will be fixed in the next maintenance release.

[aeichner]

Btw. network booting is supported with virtio-net.

[Thomas Dreibholz]

It seems that this fix has broken EFI boot for the latest Ubuntu 20.10 (https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/19967) as well as FreeBSD 12.1 (https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/19910) ISOs. VirtualBox 6.1.14 as well as 6.1.16 fail to boot these ISOs when using EFI. In BIOS mode, the ISOs can boot.

[Andrew 1717]

I can confirm Thomas's observations. Comparing the log from booting the same FreeBSD 12.1 VM under 6.1.12 vs. 6.1.16, I see an extra EFI module is loaded:

EFI: VBoxDbg> loadimage64 'R:/tinderbox/efi2-6.1/out/win.amd64/release/obj/VBoxEfiFirmware/amd64/RELEASE_VS2010/X64/VBoxPkg/VBoxFsDxe/VBoxIso9660/DEBUG/VBoxIso9600.efi' 0xbee7a000 LB 0x5680

[Luiz Angelo Daros de Luca]

Maybe it is just a matter of precedence? Try UDF and iso9600 after.

[Thomas Dreibholz]

Could somebody reopen this bug ticket? The "fix" probably messed up booting FreeBSD ISOs. VirtualBox is since a couple of months unable to boot FreeBSD when EFI is enabled!

Ticket: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/19910