Thread: Re: [Etherboot-developers] World domination, anyone?
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From: <ja...@Mc...> - 2003-04-24 18:54:26
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Marty, You've brought up some excellent ideas. I'll comment on each below. On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, Marty Connor wrote: > Hello Everyone, > > I've been thinking about additions to Etherboot, and thinking about > some of the recent discussions we've had, and thought I'd start a > thread to discuss what new directions people think are valuable. With > the recent architecture and infrastructure improvements that Eric has > worked so hard on, we have a springboard for some exciting new > additions. > > I'll start by listing some of the things that personally come to mind: > > o USB support > o PCMCIA support I'll lump these 2 together, as they are kind of similar. By offering etherboot support for USB and PCMCIA, that opens us up to a whole new world of capabilities. Booting from USB and PCMCIA wireless cards is something I'd really like to see. > o UNDI driver I think I understand this to be a "generic" driver that PXE would load, that wouldn't have to be written for any specific NIC. It would talk through some UNDI api to the pxe code. > o PXE Support What do you mean by PXE support ? As I understand it, we already have pxe support in the work that peter and Vasil have provided. If you are thinking PXE instead of Etherboot, i'm not sure that is a goal we need. > > Of the list, I think the last two interest me the most right now. We've > talked about them for some time. The NILO project was working on a free > PXE implementation, and there is some code there. > > The recent messages about getting PXELINUX to work with Etherboot > sounded like fun. The UNDI driver discussion seemed interesting as > well, though I need Peter or Vasil to explain how it works -- one more > time :) > > But what do you think? If we went for PXE or UNDI, where are the big > wins? I'm always thinking about ways Etherboot could be used by more > people, and how we could become even more useful as a component > technology. > > Btw, this is much more than of theoretical interest. I'd like to see us > implement something really cool for LinuxWorld Expo SF in August, and I > may be able to swing some limited funding for some of this. > > Ok, so go ahead. What do you think would be cool to do? Could you do > it? Do you know who could or would? And, most importantly, would it > bring us closer to WoRLd DomINatIoN? ;) If you are looking to make a big splash at Linux world, I think that PCMCIA or USB support is the thing that would make the biggest impression. I just don't think that people would get excited about UNDI or PXE. As for who can do the work, i'll have to say that i'm happy to provide opinions wherever possible, but i'm not likely to be of much help during the next couple of months. We are working like crazy to get LTSP-4 out the door by LWCE. Just think, Etherboot USB/PCMCIA support and LTSP-4 would be great for the world of diskless booting at Linux World. Thanks Marty, keep up the good work, Jim McQuillan ja...@Lt... |
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From: Timothy L. <tl...@ro...> - 2003-04-24 22:32:14
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> I'll start by listing some of the things that personally come to mind: > > o USB support I am interested in this area. Right at the moment, I would be more capable of porting the Pegasus driver than the subsystem. The spec is still gathering dust here. > o PCMCIA support I may have access to a Laptop in the near future and this may be of some interest. I suspect that supporting this with a hack (similar to the 3c515's ISAPNP) would be fairly easy. > o UNDI driver > o PXE Support > ??? > But what do you think? If we went for PXE or UNDI, where are the big > wins? I'm always thinking about ways Etherboot could be used by more > people, and how we could become even more useful as a component > technology. To throw it out there is there any possibility of Etherboot replacing PXE as a Standard? Also, if there was a way to end the need to tag kernels that would probably win some points. > Btw, this is much more than of theoretical interest. I'd like to see us > implement something really cool for LinuxWorld Expo SF in August, and I > may be able to swing some limited funding for some of this. Cooler than booting an OS through a NIC? ;-) > Ok, so go ahead. What do you think would be cool to do? Could you do > it? Do you know who could or would? And, most importantly, would it > bring us closer to WoRLd DomINatIoN? ;) > Way out there (is it even possible). Supercomputer status diskless cluster? |
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From: <ebi...@ln...> - 2003-04-24 23:33:25
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"Timothy Legge" <tl...@ro...> writes: > Way out there (is it even possible). Supercomputer status diskless > cluster? One of my favorite lines, and the reason: Been there, done that. Eric |
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From: <ebi...@ln...> - 2003-04-24 23:57:07
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"Timothy Legge" <tl...@ro...> writes:
> > I'll start by listing some of the things that personally come to mind:
> >
> > o USB support
>
> I am interested in this area. Right at the moment, I would be more
> capable of porting the Pegasus driver than the subsystem. The spec is
> still gathering dust here.
USB is on my long range wish list. But it has not become a real project yet.
Though I am more likely to support USB disks than NICs.
Oh. And I forgot to add earlier.
o ``Trusted'' booting
> > o PCMCIA support
>
> I may have access to a Laptop in the near future and this may be of some
> interest. I suspect that supporting this with a hack (similar to the
> 3c515's ISAPNP) would be fairly easy.
>
> > o UNDI driver
> > o PXE Support
> >
> ???
>
> > But what do you think? If we went for PXE or UNDI, where are the big
> > wins? I'm always thinking about ways Etherboot could be used by more
> > people, and how we could become even more useful as a component
> > technology.
>
> To throw it out there is there any possibility of Etherboot replacing
> PXE as a Standard?
>
> Also, if there was a way to end the need to tag kernels that would
> probably win some points.
Supporting pxelinux would certainly strengthen our position.
> > Btw, this is much more than of theoretical interest. I'd like to see
> us
> > implement something really cool for LinuxWorld Expo SF in August, and
> I
> > may be able to swing some limited funding for some of this.
>
> Cooler than booting an OS through a NIC? ;-)
He might have to join up with those guys porting LinuxBIOS to the
epia. Booting an OS through a NIC from the ROM chip. And GPL'd
code the whole way :)
> > Ok, so go ahead. What do you think would be cool to do? Could you do
> > it? Do you know who could or would? And, most importantly, would it
> > bring us closer to WoRLd DomINatIoN? ;)
> >
> Way out there (is it even possible). Supercomputer status diskless
> cluster?
MCR is the #5 ranked supercomputer and it boots over the network
using etherboot.
http://top500.org/list/2002/11
The nodes have hard drives for their filesystems.
There is also Pink at LANL which is diskless (A 16M compaq flash
used as an extra big rom does not count). It boots over Myrinet
so it does not use etherboot except for the ide_disk driver to load
it's bootloader.
The challenge right now is to find a good network filesystem. Booting
the cluster is no problem (especially with multicast support). But
even atftp has managed to cope. It is not fast though.
Eric
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From: Timothy L. <tl...@ro...> - 2003-04-24 22:39:26
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> doing something in the docs - they seemed quite not to be uptodate at > some places. But - there was a mailing some days ago that someone > worked on them, wasn't it? What's the status over there? The docs need work, especially the developer manual. I am documenting the process of porting a Linux driver as I go through the pcnet32 port. Also the structure of source tree is so different in 5.1 that it should be documented. Also, we should document standards for where things go (USB/PCMCIA). Documentation of architecture difference would be good as well. |
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From: Georg B. <gb...@us...> - 2003-04-26 13:04:22
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Am Freitag, 25. April 2003 00:39 schrieb Timothy Legge: > The docs need work, especially the developer manual. I am documenting > the process of porting a Linux driver as I go through the pcnet32 port. A good starting point would be src/drivers/net/sis900.txt from Marty. Unfortunately it does not apply completely to 5.1 anymore. Georg |
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From: Marty C. <md...@et...> - 2003-04-26 15:17:33
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On Saturday, April 26, 2003, at 08:05 AM, Georg Baum wrote:
> Am Freitag, 25. April 2003 00:39 schrieb Timothy Legge:
>> The docs need work, especially the developer manual. I am documenting
>> the process of porting a Linux driver as I go through the pcnet32
>> port.
> A good starting point would be src/drivers/net/sis900.txt from Marty.
> Unfortunately it does not apply completely to 5.1 anymore.
Ah, an excuse to write a new driver... Which one... which one...? ;)
Marty
--
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Name: Marty Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827;
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Voice: (617) 491-6935; Fax: (617) 491-7046
Email: md...@et...
Web: http://www.etherboot.org/
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From: Timothy L. <tl...@ro...> - 2003-04-27 01:50:25
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> > The docs need work, especially the developer manual. I am documenting > > the process of porting a Linux driver as I go through the pcnet32 port. > > A good starting point would be src/drivers/net/sis900.txt from Marty. > Unfortunately it does not apply completely to 5.1 anymore. Damn, that doc would have saved me a number of grep commands when I added sundance to 5.0. I am attempting to add more detail to the process, along the lines of what to add, what to remove when porting a Linux driver. If I complete the document, it should be easier to understand the process. |
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From: Timothy L. <tl...@ro...> - 2003-04-24 22:45:41
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> Just think, Etherboot USB/PCMCIA support and LTSP-4 would be great > for the world of diskless booting at Linux World. > This has been on the to-do list for quite a while and it may be time to tackle it. I am not sure I have the time to dedicate to the subsystems, but certainly the drivers. |
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From: <ke...@us...> - 2003-04-25 00:13:38
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>I'm in work up to the ears right now, but that's not to last more than >a week or three. I'd prefer honestly more than adding features myself >doing something in the docs - they seemed quite not to be uptodate at >some places. But - there was a mailing some days ago that someone >worked on them, wasn't it? What's the status over there? They have been converted to Docbook and are in the CVS. Feel free to work on them, but probably let Timothy Legge know too, as he said he had some intentions there. I'm going on hols in a week for 3 weeks so find lots of bugs and fix lots of them. |
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From: <ke...@us...> - 2003-04-25 00:54:21
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>The UNDI driver discussion seemed interesting as >well, though I need Peter or Vasil to explain how it works -- one more >time :) I like the sound of this one actually. My impression is that the idea is that the driver calls UNDI software interrupts. In Etherboot this would require a bunch of stub routines in asm callable from C. I don't know what the UNDI entry points are like? Are they low level, like read/write a network packet, or high level, like get a file by TFTP? Where are the readable specs? Ok, maybe just some specs? :-) What revision level of the specs should we be aiming for? Peter or Vasil? >But what do you think? If we went for PXE or UNDI, where are the big >wins? I'm always thinking about ways Etherboot could be used by more >people, and how we could become even more useful as a component >technology. Supporting UNDI would allow Etherboot to run on NICs to which Etherboot has not been ported but UNDI is available in the PXE code. Supporting PXE would be another step and would allow Etherboot to be plugged into existing PXE infrastructure. Apropos of something else, does anybody know if recent BIOSes support booting from USB flash, or is that regarded as too prone to abuse? If USB booting is supported, does it work like a floppy disk? |
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From: Markus G. <ma...@gu...> - 2003-04-25 01:56:03
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Ken Yap wrote: > plugged into existing PXE infrastructure. > > Apropos of something else, does anybody know if recent BIOSes support > booting from USB flash, or is that regarded as too prone to abuse? If > USB booting is supported, does it work like a floppy disk? My new Dell D800 claims to be able to boot from USB mass storage devices (i.e. flash) and I believe I even saw options for booting over the net from PCMCIA and/or 802.11b. I haven't actually tried any of these options, so I am not sure how well the support is implemented, and I haven't been able to find any documentation for it. Markus |
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From: H. P. A. <hp...@zy...> - 2003-04-25 04:15:43
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Ken Yap wrote: >>The UNDI driver discussion seemed interesting as >>well, though I need Peter or Vasil to explain how it works -- one more >>time :) > > > I like the sound of this one actually. My impression is that the idea > is that the driver calls UNDI software interrupts. In Etherboot this > would require a bunch of stub routines in asm callable from C. I don't > know what the UNDI entry points are like? Are they low level, like > read/write a network packet, or high level, like get a file by TFTP? > Where are the readable specs? Ok, maybe just some specs? :-) What > revision level of the specs should we be aiming for? Peter or Vasil? > There are basically three levels of support in PXE: UNDI, which are raw link-layer packets, UDP, and TFTP. The latter two are referred to as the "base code" (BC). > > Apropos of something else, does anybody know if recent BIOSes support > booting from USB flash, or is that regarded as too prone to abuse? If > USB booting is supported, does it work like a floppy disk? > Works like a hard disk. -hpa |
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From: Vasil V. <vas...@sy...> - 2003-05-07 03:39:42
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On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Ken Yap wrote: > >The UNDI driver discussion seemed interesting as > >well, though I need Peter or Vasil to explain how it works -- one more > >time :) > > I like the sound of this one actually. My impression is that the idea > is that the driver calls UNDI software interrupts. In Etherboot this > would require a bunch of stub routines in asm callable from C. I don't > know what the UNDI entry points are like? Are they low level, like > read/write a network packet, or high level, like get a file by TFTP? > Where are the readable specs? Ok, maybe just some specs? :-) What > revision level of the specs should we be aiming for? Peter or Vasil? I am actually interested into getting a driver that will use UNDI. Erik has done quite a lot of the hard work implementing this on the IA64. I am not quite sure at this stage how much of the specs are common, though. Anyone else keen on doing this in the near future (month or so)? I don't know whether I will get round to doing it soon but it looks like a good idea unless someone is likely to get NIC manifucturers to put etherboot on their NIC ROMs. > >But what do you think? If we went for PXE or UNDI, where are the big > >wins? I'm always thinking about ways Etherboot could be used by more > >people, and how we could become even more useful as a component > >technology. > > Supporting UNDI would allow Etherboot to run on NICs to which Etherboot > has not been ported but UNDI is available in the PXE code. Great benefit here -- don't care which NIC you are being loaded to and still can use the flexibility of etherboot. If the UNDI is buggy, then use etherboot's driver. > Supporting PXE would be another step and would allow Etherboot to be > plugged into existing PXE infrastructure. This will be most useful to NIC manufacturers and could be used to convince them to use etherboot instead of just PXE. Then open sourcing their driver will give them better support in the long run. > Apropos of something else, does anybody know if recent BIOSes support > booting from USB flash, or is that regarded as too prone to abuse? If > USB booting is supported, does it work like a floppy disk? How is this different in terms of abuse from booting off USB floppy, which some BIOSes now support? -- Vasil |
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From: <ke...@us...> - 2003-04-25 01:00:50
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>They have been converted to Docbook and are in the CVS. Feel free to >work on them, but probably let Timothy Legge know too, as he said he had >some intentions there. I'm going on hols in a week for 3 weeks so find >lots of bugs and fix lots of them. By the way if somebody keen could grab the OpenOffice 1.1beta and work out how to edit Docbook format doco and write a short HOWTO that would be good. Etherboot needs to expand its helper base. Many people are scared off by the highly technical nature of the code, but there are many things to be done in other areas, such as improving documentation (including the website content), installation procedures and packaging, etc. |
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From: Timothy L. <tl...@ro...> - 2003-04-25 02:09:20
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> Apropos of something else, does anybody know if recent BIOSes support > booting from USB flash, or is that regarded as too prone to abuse? If > USB booting is supported, does it work like a floppy disk? I gather that some of the USB flash drives are bootable. I assume that it is bios dependant. |
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From: Timothy L. <tl...@ro...> - 2003-04-25 02:23:49
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> By the way if somebody keen could grab the OpenOffice 1.1beta and work > out how to edit Docbook format doco and write a short HOWTO that would > be good. Grabbed and looked at. I think it still need some work. It does a poop rendering job and I managed to convert a doc to one big html paragraph... > Etherboot needs to expand its helper base. Many people are scared off by > the highly technical nature of the code, but there are many things to be I agree, there are parts of it that scare the hell out of me... ;-) Tin |
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From: <ke...@us...> - 2003-04-25 02:41:00
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>> By the way if somebody keen could grab the OpenOffice 1.1beta and work >> out how to edit Docbook format doco and write a short HOWTO that would >> be good. > >Grabbed and looked at. I think it still need some work. It does a poop >rendering job and I managed to convert a doc to one big html >paragraph... I think there is a webpage at the OO dev site that explains what is needed, maybe an extra module or something, I don't remember the details. |
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From: <ke...@us...> - 2003-04-25 10:13:53
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>Also the structure of source tree is so different in 5.1 that it should >be documented. Also, we should document standards for where things go >(USB/PCMCIA). Documentation of architecture difference would be good as >well. Yes it should but you will notice that Eric did the clever thing and stole the Linux source tree structure for the most part. So have a look at /usr/src/linux/ on your Linux box for hints. |
