[gPXE] New doc. Adding a gPXE ROM directly to a VMware BIOS.

[Andrew Bobulsky]

Good evening fellow gPXE users,

For some time now I've been using and testing gPXE with VMware both for the
convenience and flexibility offered by doing so, and I suspect that many of
you also do the same.  When I first began doing so, I was chainloading gPXE
from the default PCNET32 ROM included with VMware Workstation, and after
constantly complaining in IRC one day about my tftpd32 server crashing, Shao
Miller ran me through the steps to add a gPXE ROM directly into the VM's
BIOS.

While there is an old guide for doing this with Etherboot on the Wiki
(somewhere), I realized that every time I wanted to modify another VM, I dug
back into the first one I modified to look up how I did it.

Things being what they are, I rewrote a guide from scratch today
specifically for gPXE and VMware Workstation, including screenshots and
step-by-step instructions, including a few troubleshooting steps for the
not-so-technically sophisticated reader.  While the guide mainly focuses on
performing the steps on a Windows desktop and indeed all of the screenshots
are taken from one, I am taking slightly for granted that it's so thorough
that any Linux user of Workstation would be able to follow the steps too.
 However, if there are any gotchas about performing any of these steps on
Linux, I would appreciate if anyone could offer some input in that regard in
case there's anything that I missed.

That said, I think it also makes sense to produce a similar guide adapted
specifically for VMware Fusion for OS X.... Though it'd be nice to include
or perhaps document (unless it's already done) compiling on OS X as well,
but I digress.

The guide is written with what I hope is enough information that someone who
is both a new user of gPXE *and* VMware could complete it successfully.
 Similarly, I've tried to outline the information in it in such a fashion
that more advanced users can quickly skip over mundane steps like "Locating
the VM's .vmx configuration file" without getting too lost by scrolling too
far.

Ladies and gentlemen, if any of you fellow interested gPXE users wouldn't
mind, I humbly submit the guide to you all for review, and of course any
criticisms, changes, or additions you may have :-)

The article is currently living under the "Application Notes" section of the
wiki.  Link: http://etherboot.org/wiki/appnotes/gpxeonvmware

Thank you very much, everyone.  With special thanks to Shao for showing me
how to do this in the first place, and Marty for being so encouraging when
it comes to matters of the Wiki.

Best regards,
Andrew Bobulsky
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