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From: Hans-Peter J. <hp...@ur...> - 2003-08-01 09:14:32
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Dear Ken,
On Friday 01 August 2003 04:12, Ken Yap wrote:
> >BTW: is there somebody out there really interested in this stuff?
>
> Probably not on the Etherboot-dev list though. 5.0 has just been put
> into maintenance mode and 5.2 prefers ELF images. Starting with
> mknbi-1.4.2 I intend to discourage tagged images by nagging and phase
> them out by 1.6, except for DOS and ROM tagged images. So I would
> encourage you to work on ELF image support instead.
Well, since grub is a full replacement for etherboot menus for me now,
which disappeared from 5.1, I thought, it would be interesting for
etherboot developers, too. I mainly put this together in order to get
my dos images loaded, since grub is already able to load native linux
kernel images with separate initrds via tftp. Thus, the necessity to
load elf images seems pretty low to me. Correct me, if I'm wrong.
The main advantages of using {nb,pxe}grub are:
- no need to mknbi linux kernels
- separate config files per client (if needed)
- thus no restart of dhcpd because of minor config changes
- nr of menu items isn't limited
As an additional plus, together with gfxboot from SuSE 8.2, I
succcessfully set up a customized graphical boot menu and a nice
progress bar while netbooting linux ;-).
Although eyecandy only, it's especially nice on exhibitions to prove
netbooting doesn't limit the possibilites, it greatly enhances them.
For the record: when I started experimenting with diskless linux setups
back in 1997 [fiddling with netboot and packet drivers], I couldn't
imagine, how far this could go. The progress made since then is
absolutely impressive (especially from the etherboot point of view).
I looks to me, that the future of netbooting gets brighter and brighter.
Thanks to all contributors,
Pete
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