Re: [Etherboot-developers] [RFC] Relocation techniques...

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

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

> >Given that it is safer for the loaded image to bring along it's
> >network driver, and stack, because the loaded image can be recompiled
> >and fixed.  
> 
> That's probably the solution, download a LinuxBIOS to provide PXE
> services. That's not silly at all. You can't buy new memory sticks
> smaller than 256M now. 100 Mb Ethernet is pretty standard and
> downloading a 500kB Linux kernel takes just a fraction of a second.
> Won't work on old machines? Well you can't run Windoze on old machines
> anyway, which is what those people want PXE for.
> 
> And the biggest laugh will be when people use PXE to download Etherboot
> using Peter and Vasil's clever hack, to download a LinuxBIOS, to
> download Windoze, because it's easier to get LinuxBIOS to work than
> broken PXE firmware.  I love it.

Call it freebios and the target is just about on track.

The core of LinuxBIOS which holds the name is really about taking
unitialized hardware, initializing the pieces it must (like memory),
and allocating non-conflicting resources to the hardware.  Then
LinuxBIOS reads in a bootloader (Etherboot) or a kernel (Linux) from
the rest of the rom chip, using a small ELF loader, and jumps to it. 
A table of information like memory sizes is provided at a fixed
location in RAM for the loaded OS to find.  Having a seperate
bootloader means we can reuse motherboard indpendent code trivially.

So I currently have a working BIOS with no callbacks!  

The freebios project originally set out to have the same interface as 
a traditional BIOS.  Some designs have been thrown around but not a
lot of progress has been made along that front.

But with the LinuxBIOS core maturing loading an x86 BIOS compatibility
interface is definitely worth thinking about.  It is a little more
oomph to get going but it should get the job done in the long term.

But I do like that idea PXE loading Etherboot to load a working PXE
stack!  

The loaded PXE stack might even be able to use the etherboot drivers,
so the etherboot project isn't off the look, just the rom image :)

Sort of like the LinuxBIOS project isn't off the hook of needing a
bootloader, despite the fact it is deliberately not included in the
core. :)  

Eric