Re: [Etherboot-developers] Thinking PXE compatibility thoughts....

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

Eric B said:

> I don't even want to go into how bad I think in principle a syscall
> layer in the firmware is, and it is definitely not something I would
> design for.  But at the same time I think there is value in being
> compatible, especially if it the implementation is trivial and has no
> real maintenance burden.

I'm suggesting only that the syslinux behaviour (tftp a config file) is
maintained at the highest level. As this simply uses dhcp and tftp, this
should be exactly the kind of thing that the separate EB menu stuff does
now, yes?

> Give me a broader survey, but neither pxelinux nor the freebsd loader
> use the UNDI layer.  And UNDI is an optional part of PXE for the
> Itanium.  If an unmodified pxelinux would run under etherboot there
> are plenty of people who would say that is PXE and not care about
> the technical details.

Sorry, too many acronyms beginning with 'U'. Yes, Eric, you are right;
the question is which *interfaces* to export. I am embarrased to be
guilty of the same mistake I described earlier, reading "UNDI" as the
nic independence itself and forgetting that the "I" means "interface".
Duh. People need the driver, not the driver API.

One needs UNDI only if NOT using UDP; you observe that pxe clients only
use the UDP PXE interface, and are suggesting just supporting UDP in the
first instance. It would be interesting to know what NTLOADER and other
things use.

> > I don't want PXE support as such  - I want open source firmware world
> > domination, and supporting PXE is an important step on that road.
> > Unbiased firmware which loads whatever environment is required to
> > support the OS is the aim; LinuxBIOS and Adam Sulmicki's PC BIOS work
> > can provide this for those who need an MS environments, and  EB with PXE
> > allows them to boot from the net.
> 
> You want to take the torch on this one?  It is on my wishlist, but
> I really don't have time to pursue any of this right now.

I think it's really interesting; at the moment, all I can really do is
propagandise. I've been watching EB, LinuxBIOS and friends and also
thinking about what vmware, User Mode Linux, bochs are doing for
virtualisation. I like Ollie Lho's suggestion of "Omniboot" to described
the mass of booting related stuff. This could really be something.