Firmware platform setting

Name

  platform

Details

Type	String
DHCP option number	not applicable
ISC dhcpd syntax	not applicable

Examples

Display the firmware platform

  iPXE> show platform
  builtin/platform:string = pcbios

Test whether or not current platform is (U)EFI

  iseq ${platform} efi && goto is_efi || goto not_efi

Description

Specifies the firmware platform on which iPXE is running. Possible values are:

`pcbios`	Standard PC BIOS
`efi`	(U)EFI
`linux`	Linux (for development and testing purposes only)

Notes

If you are using a sophisticated DHCP server such as ISC dhcpd, then you may use the contents of the DHCP request to differentiate between BIOS and EFI clients. The DHCP Client Architecture option (code 93) will indicate the client architecture as specified by RFC 4578:

DHCP option 93	Client architecture
0	Standard PC BIOS
6	32-bit x86 EFI
7	64-bit x86 EFI
9	64-bit x86 EFI (obsolete)
10	32-bit ARM EFI
11	64-bit ARM EFI

You could use this to determine which version of iPXE to provide to a particular client. For example, in /etc/dhcpd.conf:

  option client-arch code 93 = unsigned integer 16;
  if exists client-arch {
     if option client-arch = 00:00 {
       filename "bin/undionly.kpxe";
     } elsif option client-arch = 00:06 {
       filename "bin-i386-efi/ipxe.efi";
     } elsif option client-arch = 00:07 {
       filename "bin-x86_64-efi/ipxe.efi";
     } elsif option client-arch = 00:09 {
       filename "bin-x86_64-efi/ipxe.efi";
     } elsif option client-arch = 00:0a {
       filename "bin-arm32-efi/ipxe.efi";
     } elsif option client-arch = 00:0b {
       filename "bin-arm64-efi/ipxe.efi";
     }
  }

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