Re: [Etherboot-developers] Re: [Etherboot-users] Scanning the PCI bus

[Preston W. <pw...@ra...>]

First, I apologize for sending the first post to the users list.  I
know better; I just wasn't thinking.

>The issue of what to do with multiple NICs needs more thinking. The code
>in config.c is not flexible enough. The developers list is probably a
>better place to discuss this, hence posting is redirected there. There
>have been an exchange of opinions in the past but no code came out of
>that.
>
>Another issue is what to do with multiple drivers. Some kind of dynamic
>linking would allow pulling in the right driver from storage to execute
>in the limited memory. Dynamic linking would also pave the way for
>callbacks. But memory constraints make implementation difficult. Perhaps
>we should just grab all of low memory and give up on zImages. People
>with unsufficient memory would have to stay with 5.0 and people with
>enough memory could use 5.2.

I agree that in the general case more thought needs to be put into how
to handle multiple NICs.  However, in my case, I have a (mostly) known
environment that I need to support up to five NICs in, where all the
NICs are the same - almost (there is a mixture of Intel 82557s,
82558s, & 82559s.)

What I'm trying out is this.  Build a list of available NICs, and then
have Etherboot try the NICs in order.

In the environment I'm working under, I've set up one DHCP server to
reply with the VCI "Etherboot", so the system will always boot from a
given network regardless of which physical NIC is plugged into it.
All other interfaces are configured via DHCP as well.

Obviously, I have -DREQUIRE_VCI_ETHERBOOT enabled.

-Preston