[gPXE] Chain Grub4Dos over HTTP?

[Joakim Schicht]

It was primarily targeted at firadisk usage over http yes.

But part of the question is also about "memdisk raw" vs "memdisk iso". Lets say you have a ramboot windows (winvblock, firadisk, ms ramdisk, wimboot, disklessangel, etc) and you will boot this over HTTP. What would be the ideal way, utilizing resources most, to do this, of the 2 mentioned methods?

If I have understood it correct the usage of "memdisk iso" on such a setup will result in a lost/wasted ram equivalent to the size of the iso (not being able to use it until next reboot).. Now would it not be more wise in terms of resource utilization, to boot with "memdisk raw" and winvblock (because then all ram is utilized)? Or is it possible to recover the ram used by "memdisk iso"?

Joakim Schicht

btw, I just made a summary of HTTP booting (ramboot) for Windows; http://sanbarrow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1705

> Subject: RE: [gPXE] Chain Grub4Dos over HTTP?
> Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 09:05:56 -0500
> From: Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
> To: jonny49 at live.no
> CC: gpxe at etherboot.org
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> 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?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> GRUB4DOS doesn't know how to download via HTTP, only via TFTP.
> 
> ________________________________________
> 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?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> Perhaps you are hoping to use gPXE's HTTP along with Firadisk?
> 
> ________________________________________
> 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
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> 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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