[gPXE-devel] FW: [gPXE] environment variable expansion in 'filename'?

Miller, Shao Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
Fri May 21 13:38:43 EDT 2010


Hello Jarrod,

It is my understanding that new features or enhancements submitted to
the gPXE project can undergo the process described at this web page[1],
then hopefully meet with some consensus by at least core developers if
not the wider developer community, then with all that success, is merged
by the Project Leader.

You might also consider tracking the feature request along with any
patches you submit by using the tracking system[2].  I don't see an
account for you, yet.

Personally, I'd rather see URIs provided by DHCP stay as URIs, without
the clutter of a gPXE-specific scripting/CLI expansion syntax.  It just
seems a little messy.  Some alternatives might be:
- Passing a protocol to be used as a gPXE encapsulated option (leaving
only a relative path in the filename option, but somewhat redundant for
most cases).
- Passing script content in a gPXE encapsulated option.

_Then_again_, a some-time goal has been to re-implement autoboot() as a
default embedded script during binary build.  If that script contained:

chain ${filename}

There would indeed be no way to _avoid_ an expansion found in the
filename option from occurring, since we recursively expand.  (And
personally, I use that fact a lot.)

- Shao Miller

[1] http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/staging
[2] http://support.etherboot.org/


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