[gPXE] etherboot and WDS

[James]

On 15-Jan-10 14:26 Marty Connor wrote:
> James wrote on 1/15/10 5:12 PM:
>> On 15-Jan-10 12:00 Marty Connor wrote:
>>> James wrote on 1/15/10 12:53 PM:
> 
>> I'm currently in a sticky situation. I have problems adopting gPXE
>> because it doesn't work well with the Bochs BIOS that ships with
>> qemu 0.9.1. Updating qemu to 0.12 isn't an option so that leaves me
>> to either figure out what it will take to patch qemu to use SeaBIOS,
>> fix Etherboot to work with WDS, or hack gPXE to behave more like
>> Etherboot when identifying qemu's Bochs BIOS as PnP capable.
>> Etherboot hooks in fine but gPXE uses int 19h.
> 
> I'm guessing that getting gPXE to not print the prompt and wait for 
> input would not be too hard to do.
> 
> Even if there is a small private patch you need to apply, it might make 
> your life easier.  Perhaps we can conditionalize somehow.
> 
This is the approach I am currently investigating.  I can reduce the
BANNER_TIMEOUT to 0 and change the prompt so that it defaults to NOT
boot from network instead.  Then make it read the preferred/selected boot
device loaded into the IPL boot table at 0x0084.  I'm not so good
at x86 assembly programming so this is my tripping point.  I would probably
also want to eliminate the CTRL-B prompt for configuring gPXE.

> Besides the prompt, are there any other things that gPXE is doing that 
> are problematic for you?  We'd like to help you migrate if we can.
> 
Nothing else I've identified at this time.

Thanks,
James

> If there is a little bit of funding we might get one of our core devs 
> interested in helping with a patch.  Feel free to email me privately to 
> chat about that.
> 
> I'm hopeful we can find a solution that meets your needs and helps you 
> use gPXE.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Marty
> 
>