[Etherboot-announce] gPXE 0.9.5 released

[Marty C. <md...@et...>]

I have released gPXE version 0.9.5 at:

  http://kernel.org/pub/software/utils/boot/gpxe/

This is a major update to gPXE 0.9.3 that was released in February.  We
recommend this update for everyone.

To see the astonishing amount of work done on gPXE this year, check out:

  http://git.etherboot.org/?p=gpxe.git;a=summary

This release contains contributions from many people and I would like to
especially thank Michael Brown and H. Peter Anvin for their outstanding
collaboration on the gPXE <-> PXELINUX interface.

Using this interface, PXELINUX can use HTTP (or any other protocol gPXE
supports), greatly improving download performance and flexibility of
deployment architecture.

I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of our 2008 Google
Summer of Code students:

  * Michael Decker
  * Stefan Hajnoczi
  * Balaji Rao
  * Daniel Verkamp

Who all contributed to this release.  You can read about their Summer of
Code projects here:

  http://etherboot.org/wiki/soc/2008/start

We thank each of them for their fine contributions to gPXE, and for
being such great people to work with.

In case anyone has not seen the Google Tech Talk video about gPXE from
this summer, you can view it here:

  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1911723796712805715

You might also enjoy reading this paper on PXELINUX and gPXE by H. Peter
Anvin and Marty Connor:

http://edgyu.excess.org/ols/2008/H%20Peter%20Anvin%20-%20x86%20network%20booting%3a%20integrating%20gPXE%20and%20PXELINUX.pdf

This release of gPXE marks a significant milestone in the history of the
Etherboot Project.  We have spent over 3 years working on gPXE, and have
seen it grow from being PXE compliant to supporting booting from HTTP,
SAN, and other advanced protocols.

gPXE has features that no other network boot firmware can match at any
price.  That may sound boastful, but I don't mean it that way.  It is a
testament to the hard work of our community -- developers and users,
professionals and hobbyists.  You have inspired us to constantly improve
gPXE, and you have helped us make it happen.

Etherboot is now officially in maintenance mode.  We will generally
accept patches that maintain the current level of functionality, but
since our main focus is supporting and improving gPXE, we will not
expend significant effort improving Etherboot.

Since gPXE's feature-set far exceeds that of Etherboot, we encourage
everyone who can to migrate to gPXE wherever possible, and where it is
not possible, please let us know why.

As I have been composing this message I note already more commits to the
git repository from Michael, a reminder that we are constantly working
to optimize and enhance our software.

I would also like to thank all the people who have visited us on our IRC
channel.  We have a pleasant and ever-growing community of people on our
channel ( #etherboot on irc.freenode.net ), and have had some really
great times conversing, debugging, and just generally getting to know
people.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us turn our dreams of truly excellent
network boot software into a reality.

Please help us to continue to push the limits of what is possible by
your skill and imagination.

Thanks and Regards,

Marty