Re: [Etherboot-developers] .ebi and .elf formats

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

Marty Connor <md...@et...> writes:

> I'm working on fixing defaults for LinuxBIOS Etherboot formats on
> rom-o-matic.net, and need some clarification on what .ebi and .elf formats
> are. As far as I can tell, the .ebi format is not used anymore and can be
> removed in 5.0.7, 5.0.8, and 5.1.3. The only reference to .ebi is in the "make
> clean" section in 5.0.7 and .8, so I'm pretty sure .ebi is gone.
> 
> Am I correct in thinking .elf is now the interesting format for LinuxBIOS
> support?

Yes.  They were aliases, and .elf was clearer, than .ebi for Elf Boot Image....
In 5.1.x .elf should not be restricted to just LinuxBIOS.  Allowing etherboot
to boot itself without running mknbi-rom.
 
> Next question, is it the case that LinuxBIOS support works only with PCI NICs?

Only because I have never fixed the makefile rules.  There is no inherent reason
only PCI NICs should be supported.

Point out bugs like that and we can get them fixed.

> I seem to recall this, and so far I only seem to be able to build a .elf with
> eepro100 selected.  Is this correct?  How could I determine which NICs I could
> make .elf images with?

The all should work, in principle.  Though with the .elf prefix you may
be restricted to the family and not the exact model.  With no pci id in the
header there is no reason to do anything differently.

The restrictions are all due to strange makefile rules, and not due to any inherent
limitations of LinuxBIOS or etherboot.

> Thanks for the help,

Welcome,
Eric