[gPXE] Chain Grub4Dos over HTTP?

Miller, Shao Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
Mon Dec 7 09:05:56 EST 2009



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From: gpxe-bounces at etherboot.org [mailto:gpxe-bounces at etherboot.org] On Behalf Of Joakim Schicht
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 04:30
To: gpxe
Subject: [gPXE] Chain Grub4Dos over HTTP?

Another HTTP booting question: Is it possible to boot a diskless agent (Windows Server 2003) with a chained grldr over HTTP?
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GRUB4DOS doesn't know how to download via HTTP, only via TFTP.

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I was able to reach to the command line of Grub4Dos, and even read the menu.lst. But from there it only see (fd), since the computer is diskless. 
 
Let's say we want to boot a disk image with server 2003 on, by using grldr's "map --mem" functionality. Could it be possible to download the image with gpxe  before chaining grldr, and have grldr detect the image somehow?
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Perhaps you are hoping to use gPXE's HTTP along with Firadisk?

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I suspect this is currently impossible, but who knows...
 
I know memdisk can be used as a "kicker" for it to work, but that was not what I had in mind.
 
Joakim Schicht
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The only other thing you could try is to use SAN instead of HTTP.  That way, GRUB4DOS could be installed on your SAN and would be even faster than HTTP.  You could try WinVBlock instead, but I suspect you are after CD emulation, which isn't supported quite yet.  Sorry.

- Shao Miller


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