etherboot-developers

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Peter L. <P.L...@sy...>]

[Sorry, if I said this before ]

PXE users are more likely to want a pre-built binary (e.g. pxelinux is
generally distributed prebuilt). An all-drivers image would be a useful
default for PXE users; Etherboot image is tftped, PXE users are not
significantly affected by image size.

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ke...@us...>]

>it build a big etherboot.o file (140kb), but the etherboot.zdsk is 36
>kb.... it semms too short!
>
>Booting, it write some number and then "err"....then it halts....

Ah, you've found a bug. The Makefile rule for .z?dsk pads the output to
a full track on floppy, but assumes that no driver is > 36kB.  Obviously
we weren't looking far ahead enough. Ditto for the .z?lilo rule.
makerom.pl also has to be updated.

Fixed in the CVS.

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ebi...@ln...>]

ke...@us... (Ken Yap) writes:

> >it build a big etherboot.o file (140kb), but the etherboot.zdsk is 36
> >kb.... it semms too short!
> >
> >Booting, it write some number and then "err"....then it halts....
> 
> Ah, you've found a bug. The Makefile rule for .z?dsk pads the output to
> a full track on floppy, but assumes that no driver is > 36kB.  Obviously
> we weren't looking far ahead enough. Ditto for the .z?lilo rule.
> makerom.pl also has to be updated.
> 
> Fixed in the CVS.

We have progress.

But it appears there is still a bug in the dsk loader with
respect to large images.

I have just tested the silly case of make etherboot.elf etherboot
can successfully load the generated binary.

There was a strange bug in genrules.pl that did not add all of the
pci drivers to the list of drivers in etherboot.o and that is now
fixed.

In addition I have now added a rule for etherboot-pci.o which
is just the pci drivers.  It does not add a lot but it does mean
you don't get caught in the 3c509 drivers 4000 attempts to probe the
card, nor any other bad pci probe.

When built on my machine:
etherboot.o        is 231245 bytes
etherboot-pci.o    is 171370 bytes
etherboot.img      is 183444 bytes
etherboot.zimg     is  84581 bytes
etherboot-pci.img  is 140628 bytes
etherboot-pci.zimg is  75420 bytes

I have just updated the CHECKSIZE rule to make certain etherboot
loaded at RELOCADDR will be below 640K, including the bss segment.
Possibly this is a little too liberal but... We are so close
that etherboot.zelf does not load because it would uncompress
and exceed the 640K limit. 

So yay the code works.  Boo except loading etherboot from etherboot
it is useless at the moment.

So I guess the next step is to look at the floppy loader and see
what can be done about this so mere mortals can load super etherboot
images.

Anyway it is time for me to stop programming for the night, this was
a fun diversion but...

Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Paolo S. <al...@io...>]

Hi!

....This is an answer to a mail from Febrary, but I think there is
something to comment, now that the etherboot.zdsk is going to be quite
usable (BTW, I've seen that in CVS there are all the fix I asked two day
ago reguarding "noisy" drivers! Congratulation for the efficiency!):

"Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
[etherboot.o]
> In addition I have now added a rule for etherboot-pci.o which
> is just the pci drivers.  It does not add a lot but it does mean
> you don't get caught in the 3c509 drivers 4000 attempts to probe the
> card, nor any other bad pci probe.

Perhaps at the moment the distinction etherboot.o vs etherboot-pci.o is
not really useful; as seen here:

> etherboot.zimg     is  84581 bytes
> etherboot-pci.zimg is  75420 bytes

...super-driver sizes are similar, the 3c509 driver now do only 100
probing, without filling the screen of output, idem for other drivers...

In my opinion, priority now is to give a GOOD list of driver, and in a
GOOD order, to the linker; current etherboot.o image have the following
problems:
- some drivers are included two times
- some unusefull drivers are included (disk/*.c)
- a wrong driver is included (lance.c), preventing the image to compile
- there is no precise order in which drivers are linked

WRT the last point, these are the troubles I had:
- the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o, otherwise
3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as a 3c900b
cards (they have same IDs... :o( ...is there some other way to
distinguish these two NICs?)
- ISA cards with noisy/long/unsafe probing should be probed after ISA
cards with better probing

At the moment, my solution is adding these line to the Makefile.main:

---
# Rule for the NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
NETOBJS:=
# Note: the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o
# otherwise 3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as
a 3c900b cards
NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c90x.o $(BIN)/3c595.o $(BIN)/cs89x0.o
$(BIN)/davicom.o $(BIN)/depca.o $(BIN)/e1000.o $(BIN)/eepro.o
$(BIN)/eepro100.o $(BIN)/epic100.o $(BIN)/fa311.o $(BIN)/natsemi.o
$(BIN)/ns8390.o $(BIN)/pcnet32.o $(BIN)/prism2_pci.o $(BIN)/prism2_plx.o
$(BIN)/sis900.o $(BIN)/sk_g16.o $(BIN)/sundance.o $(BIN)/tg3.o
$(BIN)/tlan.o $(BIN)/tulip.o $(BIN)/via-rhine.o $(BIN)/w89c840.o
$(BIN)/3c503.o $(BIN)/ne.o $(BIN)/wd.o $(BIN)/ne.o
NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/rtl8139.o
# These drivers show "noise" on the screen, at the moment I'm excluding
them...
# will be fixed in next eb version
#NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c529.o $(BIN)/3c515.o $(BIN)/3c509.o
$(BIN)/smc9000.o

$(BIN)/etherboot-net.o: $(NETOBJS)
	$(LD) -r $(NETOBJS) -o $@
---

...But it is little mantainable... :-(

Some idea for petter solutions????

Bye!

Paolo

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ebi...@ln...>]

Paolo Salvan <al...@io...> writes:

> Hi!
> 
> ....This is an answer to a mail from Febrary, but I think there is
> something to comment, now that the etherboot.zdsk is going to be quite
> usable (BTW, I've seen that in CVS there are all the fix I asked two day
> ago reguarding "noisy" drivers! Congratulation for the efficiency!):
> 
> "Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
> [etherboot.o]
> > In addition I have now added a rule for etherboot-pci.o which
> > is just the pci drivers.  It does not add a lot but it does mean
> > you don't get caught in the 3c509 drivers 4000 attempts to probe the
> > card, nor any other bad pci probe.
> 
> Perhaps at the moment the distinction etherboot.o vs etherboot-pci.o is
> not really useful; as seen here:
> 
> > etherboot.zimg     is  84581 bytes
> > etherboot-pci.zimg is  75420 bytes
> 
> ...super-driver sizes are similar, the 3c509 driver now do only 100
> probing, without filling the screen of output, idem for other drivers...
> 
> In my opinion, priority now is to give a GOOD list of driver, and in a
> GOOD order, to the linker; current etherboot.o image have the following
> problems:

etherboot-pci is a good list of drivers.  When you get into ISA devices
you have heuristics, some of which work better than others.  There is no
perfect order.  etherboot-pci should never have problems on hardware it
was not built for.  etherboot all should have problems.

I disagree.  Of the selected images. etherboot.zimg should include all
of the drivers regardless of their usefulness, so we can easily test to
see if there are compile conflicts.

> - some drivers are included two times
> - some unusefull drivers are included (disk/*.c)
> - a wrong driver is included (lance.c), preventing the image to compile
> - there is no precise order in which drivers are linked
> 
> WRT the last point, these are the troubles I had:
> - the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o, otherwise
> 3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as a 3c900b
> cards (they have same IDs... :o( ...is there some other way to
> distinguish these two NICs?)
> - ISA cards with noisy/long/unsafe probing should be probed after ISA
> cards with better probing
> 
> At the moment, my solution is adding these line to the Makefile.main:
> 
> ---
> # Rule for the NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
> NETOBJS:=
> # Note: the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o
> # otherwise 3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as
> a 3c900b cards
> NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c90x.o $(BIN)/3c595.o $(BIN)/cs89x0.o
> $(BIN)/davicom.o $(BIN)/depca.o $(BIN)/e1000.o $(BIN)/eepro.o
> $(BIN)/eepro100.o $(BIN)/epic100.o $(BIN)/fa311.o $(BIN)/natsemi.o
> $(BIN)/ns8390.o $(BIN)/pcnet32.o $(BIN)/prism2_pci.o $(BIN)/prism2_plx.o
> $(BIN)/sis900.o $(BIN)/sk_g16.o $(BIN)/sundance.o $(BIN)/tg3.o
> $(BIN)/tlan.o $(BIN)/tulip.o $(BIN)/via-rhine.o $(BIN)/w89c840.o
> $(BIN)/3c503.o $(BIN)/ne.o $(BIN)/wd.o $(BIN)/ne.o
> NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/rtl8139.o
> # These drivers show "noise" on the screen, at the moment I'm excluding
> them...
> # will be fixed in next eb version
> #NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c529.o $(BIN)/3c515.o $(BIN)/3c509.o
> $(BIN)/smc9000.o
> 
> $(BIN)/etherboot-net.o: $(NETOBJS)
> 	$(LD) -r $(NETOBJS) -o $@
> ---
> 
> ...But it is little mantainable... :-(
> 
> Some idea for petter solutions????

Are ISA devices really that common?  I am about ready to start replacing
PCI devices with PCI express versions.

You can make any image you want by:

make bin/driver--driver--driver.ext  

And this gets the link order in the order you specify.

Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Paolo S. <al...@io...>]

Hi Eric!

Ok for etherboot.o and for etherboot-pci.o, my simply question is:
perhaps it is worth doing a third image, with all NIC drivers, optimized
for the building of an all-NIC-driver auto-probing image...
It should include ISA-card also, because (at least in Thinclients
world...and this is where I come from) there are a lot of ISA
ne2000-compatible card going around...

A "make bin/driver--driver--driver.ext" surely works pretty well, but it
is not so immediate as a "make bin/etherboot-XXX"...

Ok... all these lines to say that I think such an image would be useful
not only for me (I posted an email in the thinstation-general ML about
the auto-probing disk, and there were people interested...), perhaps it
is worth considering it...

Bye!   ;o)

Paolo


"Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
> 
> Paolo Salvan <al...@io...> writes:
> 
> > Hi!
> >
> > ....This is an answer to a mail from Febrary, but I think there is
> > something to comment, now that the etherboot.zdsk is going to be quite
> > usable (BTW, I've seen that in CVS there are all the fix I asked two day
> > ago reguarding "noisy" drivers! Congratulation for the efficiency!):
> >
> > "Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
> > [etherboot.o]
> > > In addition I have now added a rule for etherboot-pci.o which
> > > is just the pci drivers.  It does not add a lot but it does mean
> > > you don't get caught in the 3c509 drivers 4000 attempts to probe the
> > > card, nor any other bad pci probe.
> >
> > Perhaps at the moment the distinction etherboot.o vs etherboot-pci.o is
> > not really useful; as seen here:
> >
> > > etherboot.zimg     is  84581 bytes
> > > etherboot-pci.zimg is  75420 bytes
> >
> > ...super-driver sizes are similar, the 3c509 driver now do only 100
> > probing, without filling the screen of output, idem for other drivers...
> >
> > In my opinion, priority now is to give a GOOD list of driver, and in a
> > GOOD order, to the linker; current etherboot.o image have the following
> > problems:
> 
> etherboot-pci is a good list of drivers.  When you get into ISA devices
> you have heuristics, some of which work better than others.  There is no
> perfect order.  etherboot-pci should never have problems on hardware it
> was not built for.  etherboot all should have problems.
> 
> I disagree.  Of the selected images. etherboot.zimg should include all
> of the drivers regardless of their usefulness, so we can easily test to
> see if there are compile conflicts.
> > - some drivers are included two times
> > - some unusefull drivers are included (disk/*.c)
> > - a wrong driver is included (lance.c), preventing the image to compile
> > - there is no precise order in which drivers are linked
> >
> > WRT the last point, these are the troubles I had:
> > - the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o, otherwise
> > 3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as a 3c900b
> > cards (they have same IDs... :o( ...is there some other way to
> > distinguish these two NICs?)
> > - ISA cards with noisy/long/unsafe probing should be probed after ISA
> > cards with better probing
> >
> > At the moment, my solution is adding these line to the Makefile.main:
> >
> > ---
> > # Rule for the NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
> > NETOBJS:=
> > # Note: the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o
> > # otherwise 3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as
> > a 3c900b cards
> > NETOBJS+=             $(BIN)/3c90x.o $(BIN)/3c595.o $(BIN)/cs89x0.o
> > $(BIN)/davicom.o $(BIN)/depca.o $(BIN)/e1000.o $(BIN)/eepro.o
> > $(BIN)/eepro100.o $(BIN)/epic100.o $(BIN)/fa311.o $(BIN)/natsemi.o
> > $(BIN)/ns8390.o $(BIN)/pcnet32.o $(BIN)/prism2_pci.o $(BIN)/prism2_plx.o
> > $(BIN)/sis900.o $(BIN)/sk_g16.o $(BIN)/sundance.o $(BIN)/tg3.o
> > $(BIN)/tlan.o $(BIN)/tulip.o $(BIN)/via-rhine.o $(BIN)/w89c840.o
> > $(BIN)/3c503.o $(BIN)/ne.o $(BIN)/wd.o $(BIN)/ne.o
> > NETOBJS+=             $(BIN)/rtl8139.o
> > # These drivers show "noise" on the screen, at the moment I'm excluding
> > them...
> > # will be fixed in next eb version
> > #NETOBJS+=            $(BIN)/3c529.o $(BIN)/3c515.o $(BIN)/3c509.o
> > $(BIN)/smc9000.o
> >
> > $(BIN)/etherboot-net.o: $(NETOBJS)
> >       $(LD) -r $(NETOBJS) -o $@
> > ---
> >
> > ...But it is little mantainable... :-(
> >
> > Some idea for petter solutions????
> 
> Are ISA devices really that common?  I am about ready to start replacing
> PCI devices with PCI express versions.
> 
> You can make any image you want by:
> 
> make bin/driver--driver--driver.ext
> 
> And this gets the link order in the order you specify.
> 
> Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ebi...@ln...>]

Paolo Salvan <al...@io...> writes:

> Hi Eric!
> 
> Ok for etherboot.o and for etherboot-pci.o, my simply question is:
> perhaps it is worth doing a third image, with all NIC drivers, optimized
> for the building of an all-NIC-driver auto-probing image...
> It should include ISA-card also, because (at least in Thinclients
> world...and this is where I come from) there are a lot of ISA
> ne2000-compatible card going around...
> 
> A "make bin/driver--driver--driver.ext" surely works pretty well, but it
> is not so immediate as a "make bin/etherboot-XXX"...
> 
> Ok... all these lines to say that I think such an image would be useful
> not only for me (I posted an email in the thinstation-general ML about
> the auto-probing disk, and there were people interested...), perhaps it
> is worth considering it...

Sounds reasonable.  

What I would suggest is that you prototype a thin client probing driver
using the existing mechanism.  And once it works post the make line
and the developers can tweak the makefile for that case.

What is worth noting for this case is that etherboot actually prints
the driver it uses so if someone wants to create a specific etherboot
driver they already know the make target they need.

Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Paolo S. <al...@io...>]

Hi!

This is my "prototype":

# Rule for the all-NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
NETOBJS:=
# Note: the 3c90x.o driver should be linked BEFORE the 3c595.o
# otherwise 3c905b cards will be (badly) handled by the 3c595 driver as
3c900b cards
NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c90x.o
# PCI cards....
NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c595.o $(BIN)/cs89x0.o $(BIN)/davicom.o
$(BIN)/depca.o $(BIN)/e1000.o $(BIN)/eepro.o $(BIN)/eepro100.o
$(BIN)/epic100.o $(BIN)/fa311.o $(BIN)/natsemi.o $(BIN)/ns8390.o
$(BIN)/pcnet32.o $(BIN)/prism2_pci.o $(BIN)/prism2_plx.o
$(BIN)/rtl8139.o $(BIN)/sis900.o $(BIN)/sk_g16.o $(BIN)/sundance.o
$(BIN)/tg3.o $(BIN)/tlan.o $(BIN)/tulip.o $(BIN)/via-rhine.o
$(BIN)/w89c840.o
# ISA cards...
NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c503.o $(BIN)/ne.o $(BIN)/wd.o $(BIN)/3c529.o
$(BIN)/3c509.o $(BIN)/smc9000.o
# This driver has slow autoprobing and is rarely used, so it is better
to exclude it...
#NETOBJS+=		$(BIN)/3c515.o

$(BIN)/etherboot-net.o: $(NETOBJS)
	$(LD) -r $(NETOBJS) -o $@

Then, i use "make etherboot-net.zdsk" to build my floppy...

...bye!

Paolo

"Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
> 
> Paolo Salvan <al...@io...> writes:
> 
> > Hi Eric!
> >
> > Ok for etherboot.o and for etherboot-pci.o, my simply question is:
> > perhaps it is worth doing a third image, with all NIC drivers, optimized
> > for the building of an all-NIC-driver auto-probing image...
> > It should include ISA-card also, because (at least in Thinclients
> > world...and this is where I come from) there are a lot of ISA
> > ne2000-compatible card going around...
> >
> > A "make bin/driver--driver--driver.ext" surely works pretty well, but it
> > is not so immediate as a "make bin/etherboot-XXX"...
> >
> > Ok... all these lines to say that I think such an image would be useful
> > not only for me (I posted an email in the thinstation-general ML about
> > the auto-probing disk, and there were people interested...), perhaps it
> > is worth considering it...
> 
> Sounds reasonable.
> 
> What I would suggest is that you prototype a thin client probing driver
> using the existing mechanism.  And once it works post the make line
> and the developers can tweak the makefile for that case.

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ke...@us...>]

>When built on my machine:
>etherboot.o        is 231245 bytes
>etherboot-pci.o    is 171370 bytes
>etherboot.img      is 183444 bytes
>etherboot.zimg     is  84581 bytes
>etherboot-pci.img  is 140628 bytes
>etherboot-pci.zimg is  75420 bytes
>...
>So I guess the next step is to look at the floppy loader and see
>what can be done about this so mere mortals can load super etherboot
>images.

Unless boot1a.s is made smarter, the limit it can load is 128 kB because
it takes the number of 512 byte sectors to load from the length byte in
the "ROM" image. It could be made smarter to look inside the PCI header
which uses a short to hold the number of sectors. But that would
probably require a second stage loader.

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ebi...@ln...>]

ke...@us... (Ken Yap) writes:

> >When built on my machine:
> >etherboot.o        is 231245 bytes
> >etherboot-pci.o    is 171370 bytes
> >etherboot.img      is 183444 bytes
> >etherboot.zimg     is  84581 bytes
> >etherboot-pci.img  is 140628 bytes
> >etherboot-pci.zimg is  75420 bytes
> >...
> >So I guess the next step is to look at the floppy loader and see
> >what can be done about this so mere mortals can load super etherboot
> >images.
> 
> Unless boot1a.s is made smarter, the limit it can load is 128 kB because
> it takes the number of 512 byte sectors to load from the length byte in
> the "ROM" image. It could be made smarter to look inside the PCI header
> which uses a short to hold the number of sectors. But that would
> probably require a second stage loader.

That is fine.  None of the compressed images exceed 128KB.
The problem I had was a read error at the end.  So either
I had a bad floppy, which read back o.k. before I tried it.
Or there was a checksum error.

Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ke...@et...>]

># Rule for the all-NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
>NETOBJS:=

The easiest solution may be to put your rules in a wrapper
Makefile.etherboot which includes the main Makefile at the end. Since
the ISA objects are i386 specific, maybe something like

	make -f arch/i386/Makefile.etherboot

Since the autoprobing image mostly makes sense in .zdsk form (too large
for .com) and once you have found what NIC it is, you can make a
targetted image, maybe all rom-o-matic.net needs is a link to a
ready-made image for downloading.

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Paolo S. <al...@io...>]

Hi!

Ken Yap ha scritto:
> 
> ># Rule for the all-NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
> >NETOBJS:=
> 
> The easiest solution may be to put your rules in a wrapper
> Makefile.etherboot which includes the main Makefile at the end. Since
> the ISA objects are i386 specific, maybe something like
> 
>         make -f arch/i386/Makefile.etherboot
> 
> Since the autoprobing image mostly makes sense in .zdsk form (too large
> for .com) and once you have found what NIC it is, you can make a
> targetted image, maybe all rom-o-matic.net needs is a link to a
> ready-made image for downloading.

Marty, what do you think? This solution seems simple and nice!

You can propose it as a nice "what driver does I need?" tool also...

It will say the .rom image you need...nice for later selecting the right
.zrom image!


...A question: could it be useful for .zpxe image also?
Waiting for a UNDI driver, it could be a temporary solution to use NBI
image with PXE...
(btw, are there works going on about an etherboot UNDI driver?)

bye!

Paolo

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Vasil V. <vas...@sy...>]

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Paolo Salvan wrote:

> Ken Yap ha scritto:
> >
> > ># Rule for the all-NIC-autoprobing image. (by Paolo Salvan)
> > >NETOBJS:=
> >
> > The easiest solution may be to put your rules in a wrapper
> > Makefile.etherboot which includes the main Makefile at the end. Since
> > the ISA objects are i386 specific, maybe something like
> >
> >         make -f arch/i386/Makefile.etherboot
> >
> > Since the autoprobing image mostly makes sense in .zdsk form (too large
> > for .com) and once you have found what NIC it is, you can make a
> > targetted image, maybe all rom-o-matic.net needs is a link to a
> > ready-made image for downloading.
>
> Marty, what do you think? This solution seems simple and nice!
>
> You can propose it as a nice "what driver does I need?" tool also...
>
> It will say the .rom image you need...nice for later selecting the right
> .zrom image!
>
>
> ...A question: could it be useful for .zpxe image also?

PXE on i386 can't load larger than 32K images, but if you mean selecting the
right .zpxe image, yes, it will be useful.

> Waiting for a UNDI driver, it could be a temporary solution to use NBI
> image with PXE...

Are you volunteering? There are at least two drivers here: etherboot providing
an UNDI driver so that PXE images can be loaded, or etherboot's network driver
using the PXE API provided by the UNDI driver already there. Which one are you
interested in? My understanding is that you want to load .zpxe image without
specifying what network card you have, that is the second one above.

> (btw, are there works going on about an etherboot UNDI driver?)

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Paolo S. <al...@io...>]

Hi!

> > ...A question: could it be useful for .zpxe image also?
> 
> PXE on i386 can't load larger than 32K images, but if you mean selecting the
> right .zpxe image, yes, it will be useful.
> 
> > Waiting for a UNDI driver, it could be a temporary solution to use NBI
> > image with PXE...
> 
> Are you volunteering? There are at least two drivers here: etherboot providing
> an UNDI driver so that PXE images can be loaded, or etherboot's network driver
> using the PXE API provided by the UNDI driver already there. Which one are you
> interested in? My understanding is that you want to load .zpxe image without
> specifying what network card you have, that is the second one above.

I'm a developer of thinstation (look at thinstation.sf.net); my simple
needs is to permit hybrid etherboot/pxe tinclient networks.... without
strange DHCP settings.

As you said, the solution could be:
- etherboot exposing a UNDI interface for using the PXE loader
or
- an etherboot.zpxe loader using the underlying UNDI driver to load the
final bootimage.NBI

I prefer the second solution (for no particular technical reason...)

A nice feature for this loader would be something like:

"if tftp file name match *.zpxe, then download *.nbi instead..."

...this to simplify DHCP configuration...

Ok.... I've said what I'd like to see... but no, I can't volunteer to do
this; not enought knowledge, but mainly not enought time to do it....
:o(

bye!

Paolo

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ebi...@ln...>]

Peter Lister <P.L...@sy...> writes:

> [Sorry, if I said this before ]
> 
> PXE users are more likely to want a pre-built binary (e.g. pxelinux is
> generally distributed prebuilt). An all-drivers image would be a useful
> default for PXE users; Etherboot image is tftped, PXE users are not
> significantly affected by image size.

make etherboot.??? whatever should work.

Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Alke <al...@io...>]

"Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
> 
> Peter Lister <P.L...@sy...> writes:
> 
> > [Sorry, if I said this before ]
> >
> > PXE users are more likely to want a pre-built binary (e.g. pxelinux is
> > generally distributed prebuilt). An all-drivers image would be a useful
> > default for PXE users; Etherboot image is tftped, PXE users are not
> > significantly affected by image size.
> 
> make etherboot.??? whatever should work.

I'll try...

Only a little suggestion, if you want this option more widely tested:
add this option in the www.rom-o-matic.net site (I hope the manteiner is
reading this ml...)

Byw!

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Alke <al...@io...>]

Mmmmm...

I've tried "make bin/etherboot.zdsk", nut it doesn't work....

it build a big etherboot.o file (140kb), but the etherboot.zdsk is 36
kb.... it semms too short!

Booting, it write some number and then "err"....then it halts....

...some helps?????


"Eric W. Biederman" ha scritto:
> 
> Peter Lister <P.L...@sy...> writes:
> 
> > [Sorry, if I said this before ]
> >
> > PXE users are more likely to want a pre-built binary (e.g. pxelinux is
> > generally distributed prebuilt). An all-drivers image would be a useful
> > default for PXE users; Etherboot image is tftped, PXE users are not
> > significantly affected by image size.
> 
> make etherboot.??? whatever should work.
> 
> Eric

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[Vasil V. <vas...@sy...>]

On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Peter Lister wrote:

>
> [Sorry, if I said this before ]
>
> PXE users are more likely to want a pre-built binary (e.g. pxelinux is
> generally distributed prebuilt). An all-drivers image would be a useful
> default for PXE users; Etherboot image is tftped, PXE users are not
> significantly affected by image size.

PXE actually has a limit of 32K for the size of the first downloaded image
(NBP as they call it).

--
Vasil

Re: [Etherboot-developers] Universal auto-probing driver

[<ebi...@ln...>]

Vasil Vasilev <vas...@sy...> writes:

> On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Peter Lister wrote:
> 
> >
> > [Sorry, if I said this before ]
> >
> > PXE users are more likely to want a pre-built binary (e.g. pxelinux is
> > generally distributed prebuilt). An all-drivers image would be a useful
> > default for PXE users; Etherboot image is tftped, PXE users are not
> > significantly affected by image size.
> 
> PXE actually has a limit of 32K for the size of the first downloaded image
> (NBP as they call it).

On Itanium it is not quite so limited but the PXE stack also can't
handle loading anything large, so you always need a NBP.

Eric