[gPXE-devel] About !PXE and UNDI_LOADER

[Michael Brown]

On Thursday 24 Jun 2010 03:28:40 Sean Shoufu Luo wrote:
>  Guys, I'm still struggling with UNDI driver for our OS. Problem again!
> According to gPXE code, it seems, the !PXE structure is initialized only
> when gPXE ROM started. So if boot from disk, there will no !PXE initialized
> and loaded to memory. Right? If I boot from disk, is it possible for me to
> use UNDI? Can I use UNDI_LOADER or other method to initialize !PXE
> structure?

You can do, potentially.  However, there's no guarantee that the UNDI loader 
will function correctly; some BIOSes will completely remove PXE ROMs when not 
network booting, and even if the ROM is present, there's a high chance that by 
the time your OS loads the UNDI loader will no longer work.

Basically, you cannot sensibly use the PXE ROM as a substitute for writing 
network drivers for your OS.  It's just a bad idea.  If you really don't want 
to write your own drivers then write a shim layer to allow you to use 
something like Linux or BSD drivers instead.

Michael