virtualbox pxe

It seems that Virtualbox uses different PXE "roms" depending on the installation of Extension pack or not.

i.e. without extension pack, it seems to use a limited version of iPXE, and maybe some image format are not handled (Exec format error, Could not boot image, etc.)

openindiana, virtualbox and bridged network

openindiana, virtualbox and bridged network

As far I can see, there are problems assigning the physical guest interface (i.e. igb0) to the bridged virtualbox VM network interface.

 

To avoid problems (i.e. the virtual machine hangs), you must first create a vnic

dladm create-vnic -l igb0 vnic0

... but ... it is not sufficient: you must assign the MAC address of the vnic to the bridged network interface of the VM

dladm show-vnic
LINK         OVER    SPEED  MACADDRESS        MACADDRTYPE    VID
vnic0        igb0    1000   2:8:20:68:25:9b   random    0

If you don't assign the vnic MAC address to the VM network adapter, simply the VM networking doesn't work.