Boot FOG from a machine’s own EFI System Partition

FOG 1.6

This page is a FOG 1.6 addition. The archive layout described here landed with the EMBED-less iPXE change and does not exist on earlier releases.

Some machines cannot PXE boot at all — firmware with no network boot option. On others you would simply rather not reorder the boot menu for every task. Both can boot FOG from an iPXE binary sitting on the machine’s own EFI System Partition.

The server publishes ready-to-copy archives for this, so you fetch one over HTTP rather than hand-rolling a symlink out of the TFTP tree:

https://<your-fog-server>/fog/service/localboot/
  manifest.json          index of everything below, with sha256 for each file
  fog-esp-x86_64.zip
  fog-esp-i386.zip
  fog-esp-arm64.zip

Note

Where the zip package is missing the installer falls back to .tar.gz. manifest.json always names the file that was actually produced, so read the name it gives rather than assuming an extension.

Local ESP boot is not a Secure Boot feature and needs no Secure Boot keys. It predates Secure Boot by years; Secure Boot only added the requirement for a signature. The archives are published either way.

Which folder

Each archive is packed flat and holds one folder per boot route. Copy the folders onto the ESP — \EFI\FOG\ is a good place — keeping them intact, then point the firmware boot manager at one file inside one folder.

Situation	Folder
Machine PXE boots normally	secureboot-upstream\
No PXE boot option, or firmware provides no SNP	fog-ipxe\
Secure Boot on with FOG’s MOK enrolled, or Secure Boot off, and you want to keep the shim	secureboot-fog\
FOG’s certificate is in db	fog-ipxe\ — no shim needed

The -customca\ variants of the two FOG folders exist only where the server was installed with --rebuild-ipxe-with-my-ca. They are the same builds with your CA embedded, so iPXE will accept an HTTPS FOG server whose certificate chains to a private CA. Under Secure Boot they behave identically — see Custom CA versus Secure Boot.

Nothing in the archive chains anything else

The binary you pick reads the script beside it and boots FOG. If it does not work, pick a different one — there is no fallback chain to wait for, by design.

An earlier layout did chain, and it could re-enter itself and hang the firmware. See Why the shim’s second stage is not the file you expect.

What works in which Secure Boot state

Measured on physical hardware, VMware and KVM.

Folder	SB off	SB on, nothing enrolled	SB on, MOK enrolled	SB on, cert in db
secureboot-upstream\	yes	menu only	yes	yes
fog-ipxe\	yes	no	no	yes
secureboot-fog\	yes	no	yes	yes

menu only means it reaches FOG’s menu, exits to disk and can run MokManager — but imaging tasks fail. FOS’s kernel is signed by your server, so imaging needs that certificate trusted however you reached the menu. “Nothing enrolled” is a bootstrap state, not a destination.

Two results that surprise people

A MOK does nothing for fog-ipxe\. MokList belongs to shim, and firmware never reads it. Booting FOG’s binary directly under Secure Boot needs the certificate in db.

With nothing enrolled, secureboot-fog\ does not offer to enrol — it simply fails. shim launches MokManager only when a MOK request is already pending, and nothing in this archive stages one. Enrol first, then boot.

Enrolling FOG’s certificate

MOK.der in the archive does two jobs. Only the name advertises the first.

As a MOK, for the shim routes

Boot a shim from secureboot-upstream\ or secureboot-fog\. When it cannot verify the next stage it launches MokManager: choose Enroll key from disk and select MOK.der from that same folder. Reboot.

See Secure Boot: MOK enrollment for the full walkthrough.

As the db certificate, for booting with no shim

Add MOK.der to db. db is what firmware checks to verify a boot image; PK and KEK only control who may change db.

How many variables you need depends on who performs the write.

Enrolling via	Variables needed	Why
The firmware’s own tool, or a hypervisor setting, with the platform in Setup/Custom Mode	db alone	The write is unauthenticated, so nothing has to vouch for it
A running OS — FOG’s enrolment task, a Linux tool, PowerShell’s Secure Boot cmdlets	PK, KEK and db	In User Mode a db write must be authenticated by a KEK-signed update, and the machine only trusts FOG’s KEK if FOG’s PK is enrolled too

Confirmed on the first row: MOK.der added to db by itself, no PK and no KEK, then a FOG-signed binary booted directly with no shim. That is why an existing machine’s firmware UI asking for all three is not evidence that db depends on them — it is offering the only write it can authenticate from a stranger, which is replacing the whole chain. You do not have to accept that offer if you can write db directly.

The second row is what FOG’s own task does — see Setup Mode enrollment — and why the .auth files exist.

Not every firmware has been tested either way

The routes above are confirmed on the hardware and hypervisors used during this work, not exhaustively. If yours behaves differently — db alone rejected at a firmware menu, or accepted from an OS tool — please report it, on the FOG forums or on issue 1267, which is collecting exactly this. The table should be corrected, not trusted.

MOK.der is the intermediate, and FOG’s signatures carry it inside them, so this one certificate covers every binary in the archive and the signing leaf can be rotated without re-enrolling anything.

On VMware, put MOK.der in the VM’s directory and add to the .vmx:

uefi.secureBoot.dbDefault.file0 = "MOK.der"

On an existing VM, uefi.allowAuthBypass = "TRUE" lets you add it through the firmware UI instead.

Hand the firmware MOK.der, not the .auth files

PK.auth, KEK.auth and db.auth are signed EFI variable updates, for FOG’s own unattended enrolment task — see Setup Mode enrollment. A firmware menu or a hypervisor cannot read them. Offering PK.auth to a firmware file picker is the single most common way this goes wrong.

Three things to know before enrolling a fleet

Append, never replace. uefi.secureBoot.dbDefault.append = "FALSE" drops Microsoft’s certificates from db and Windows stops booting.

Changing db is measured into TPM PCR 7, so it can trigger BitLocker recovery. Suspend BitLocker first on machines that use it.

db is a firmware-level, machine-wide, effectively permanent trust anchor. Anything your server’s key signs will boot before any OS — a broader grant than a MOK, which only shim honours. Removing an entry later is another per-machine firmware visit.

What db enrolment unlocks elsewhere

Once firmware trusts your certificate, the shim stops being necessary anywhere — not just for local ESP boot:

• Netboot under Secure Boot, with no configuration change. FOG’s generated DHCP config already hands out its own snponly.efi; the shim path is the commented-out alternative. A db-enrolled fleet keeps the default and works, with two fewer images loaded and verified per boot and no MokManager visit per machine.
• Imaging with no shim in the chain, since FOS’s kernel carries the same signature.
• The refind_efi exit type from a shim-less boot — rEFInd is signed by your server too.
• Anything else FOG signs, such as custom kernels.
• Pre-enrolment at template level. uefi.secureBoot.dbDefault.file0 in a VM template means every VM is FOG-bootable from creation. Vendor tooling (Dell Command | Configure, HP BCU, Lenovo) can push db entries to physical fleets the same way.

If it does not bring up your network

First, check the firmware has an IPv4-configured NIC at all

This is the trap, and it costs people a day. If the NIC’s IPv4 setting is not DHCP, no SNP device exists — so snp and snponly builds find nothing, and the firmware shows no UEFI PXE boot option either, which looks exactly like a machine with no PXE ROM.

On OVMF/KVM, from the firmware front page:

Device Manager → Network Device List:

Pick the NIC by its MAC:

IPv4 Network Configuration:

Tick Enable DHCP, then save with F10. The device and the UEFI PXE boot option both appear afterwards.

If the network really is the binary’s problem, point the boot manager at a different one:

Binary	When
fog-ipxe\fogipxe.efi	all of iPXE’s own NIC drivers. Start here on firmware with no PXE boot option — such firmware usually provides no SNP either, so a binary needing one is no use to it
fog-ipxe\fogsnp.efi	drives the NIC through the firmware’s SNP protocol
fog-ipxe\fogintel.efi	Intel only, for when the all-drivers build misbehaves on that NIC
fog-ipxe\fogrealtek.efi	Realtek only, same reason
fog-ipxe\fogsnponly.efi	binds only the device iPXE was loaded from — off an ESP that is the disk, so in principle it finds no NIC, though it booted fine on every machine tested here

No order beyond that is prescribed, because it genuinely varies: two machines tested during this work disagreed about which build drove their NIC, one reporting SNP and the other NII.

Why the shim’s second stage is not the file you expect

secureboot-fog\ contains FOG’s build twice, as ipxe.efi and as snponly.efi, plus both of upstream’s shims. That is coverage, not duplication.

shim derives its second stage from its own filename, at runtime. Many firmwares will not report the loaded image’s filename, and when that happens shim falls back to ipxe.efi — whichever shim you launched (ipxe/ipxe#1684). Observed directly: snponly-shimx64.efi netboots snponly.efi correctly but, booted off an ESP, hunts for ipxe.efi. Over TFTP the device path carries the filename; off an ESP it does not.

Two consequences:

• Never rename a shim. Renaming cannot change what it looks for, and where firmware does report the name it breaks the derivation outright.
• In secureboot-upstream\ the two shims are not independent entry points on affected firmware — booting either lands on upstream’s ipxe.efi.

Note

The same mechanism is why the folders each carry their own autoexec.ipxe, and why every copy is identical. iPXE reads that script from the directory the running binary was loaded from. An earlier layout put a chain script at the archive root and different boot logic in a subfolder; a chained binary resolves the script by flat name through a synthetic filesystem handle, so it re-read the root script, chained itself, and recursed until the firmware ran out of memory.

Changing how it boots

autoexec.ipxe is a text file. Edit it and the next boot picks the change up — no toolchain, no rebuild. Every copy in the archive is identical, so edit the one in the same folder as the binary you boot, or all of them if you switch between them.

If your switch runs STP or port power-save and the link is not up when iPXE first asks for DHCP, uncomment the sleep at the top — or reinstall the server with --boot-delay <seconds>, which writes that line here and for netboot clients at the same time.

Custom CA versus Secure Boot

These two get conflated constantly, and they are independent:

• CA embedding decides whether iPXE will accept your FOG server’s HTTPS certificate. You need it only for a private CA.
• Secure Boot signing decides whether firmware or shim will load the image at all.

Both variants are signed with the same key, so one enrolment covers either and they behave identically in the table above. Use -customca\ when your server uses HTTPS with your own CA; otherwise the plain folders are fine.

See also

• Secure Boot: MOK enrollment — the attended shim route
• Secure Boot: Setup Mode enrollment — FOG’s unattended db/KEK/PK task
• Secure Boot: signing FOS with your own key
• UEFI boot entries