[gPXE-devel] Broadcom 5709 Driver Support within GPXE

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Sascha Zindel <browsingman at gmail.com> wrote:
> The new broadcom driver makes use of parts of the zlib library to unzip
> broadcom firmware data provided within bnx2_fw.h/bnx2_fw2.h.
> Unfortunately gpxe does not seem to include the zlib library.
>
> So i wonder if someone could help me regarding this topic by pointing out a
> solution for this problem or either even provide a customized version
> including support for these chips.

If you include the uncompressed firmware you could skip the zlib
dependency and the data will be compressed as part of the gPXE build
(it's automatic and you don't need to worry about it).  I'd try this
at least as a first shot at getting an updated driver working.

The bnx2 is a little tricky because it requires that firmware blob.
The blob is large by gPXE standards and might not make it possible to
produce a 64 KB gPXE ROM.  But other gPXE images (.usb, .hd, .pxe,
etc) are capable holding large drivers.

Resources for developing gPXE drivers:

http://etherboot.org/wiki/faq/drivers#where_do_i_start_with_developing_a_new_driver

Stefan