[gPXE-devel] [PATCH] [efi] RFC: gPXE Download Protocol

[Michael Brown]

On Wednesday 02 Jun 2010 04:23:39 Geoff Lywood wrote:
> Currently, on EFI, the image loading capabilities are fairly limited. In
>  particular, once you load up an EFI image, there is no way for that EFI
>  image to call back into gPXE in order to use the existing network stack.
>  So, any bootloader would need to either implement its own network
>  capabilities, or not use the network at all.
> 
> I would like to have an interface to allow EFI bootloaders (such as elilo)
>  to use gPXE's network stack. In my opinion, this warrants creating a new
>  protocol because: - None of the standard EFI protocols support HTTP or
>  DNS, both of which are important features to me - An attempt to implement
>  the standard TCPv4 protocol might cause conflicts with the existing
>  firmware, because the implementation has to use global variables - The EFI
>  Load File Protocol is unsuitable, because it requires the underlying
>  network protocol to be able to determine the file size in advance, which
>  is not always possible, and it does not allow downloads to be interrupted

Is there no EFI protocol already in existence that supports a simple 
(probably-)blocking stream model (open/read/close)?

Michael