Re: [Etherboot-developers] Q: Multiple drivers.

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

>> The interface to the drivers is rather poor, it only takes the first NIC
>> it finds. Ideally it should enumerate all the NICs it can boot and
>> choose a good default or give the user a choice (one of multiple NICs of
>> the same or different models).
>
>If I can give my 2p based on discussions with Peter Lister.
>If you are booting '0 or '00 of machines you don't want a user's choice.
>Instead it will be nice to have etherboot send DHCP requests on all NICs it
>can and chooses a NIC from the ones it receives response on. Some of the NICs
>may not be connected or connected to different networks. User's interaction i
>s
>OK as long as it can be automatic as well.

I agree that user interaction isn't right when you want unattended
booting.  I'm not so sure that sending out requests on all interfaces is
the right policy either. An example is my firewall machine. If it sends
out a request to the cable modem it will get an ISP assigned address,
but this is useless for remote booting.

When the code is in a ROM on a NIC, the right action is more obvious, it
should only send out requests on the NIC it lives in. When it's part of
the BIOS ROM, then it's harder to say what the right policy is.

Perhaps the answer is to allow all these behaviours, chosen by compile
options. I could then put a single driver ROM on my internal NIC, and
you can put a multiple driver multiple request ROM in your BIOS.