[gPXE-devel] supporting gpxe sanboot (ie. attach) without boot

[Joshua Oreman]

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 8:33 AM,  <cruejones at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm starting this thread to help continue the discussion around implementing an option
> allowing gpxe to attach to ISCSI targets in a persistent manner without booting from them.
> So far we have developed a patch that implements a "keep-san-nb" (keep san no boot) option.
> While this patch works it might make sense to change the "sanboot" directive to something more generic
> like "sanmount" then provide a boot option like "sanboot". This avoids the confusion around the "sanboot"
> option name directly implying booting.
>
> Any thoughts?

I'm working on a rather large branch called "unity" that unifies
treatment of images and SAN disks. That is, the "sanboot" command
becomes effectively an alias for "chain"; `fetching' a SAN `image'
connects to the SAN device and proxies reads and writes to it
appropriately. It also provides an "attach" command (analogous to your
"sanmount") for making any image (memory or SAN) available using the
typical int 13h mechanism. (Among other things, this allows booting
from an ISO image over iSCSI, if the OS supports it. I've successfully
demonstrated this with a slightly modified Ubuntu livecd.)

It's been a few months since I've been able to work on this in
earnest, and it still needs some cleaning up, but I'd expect a patch
to hit the mailing list within a month or so.

If you'd like to send your patch, that'd be great so other people can
benefit now, but my hope is that the unity branch will be merged once
it's cleaned up and will provide a more generic solution here.

-- Josh

>
> Thanks
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