[gPXE] etherboot and WDS

[James]

Following up my own message...

I was able to reverse the prompting and reducing the timeout to zero
eliminated the prompting altogether.  It is now working as desired
with the qemu pcbios.  I can select the boot device either through
qemu configuration or the pcbios F12 boot menu and the preferred
device is booted.

Oh, there was that one other problem with gPXE I experienced with
the RTL8139 10ec:8139 version not getting the correct MAC address
from the hardware.  Thread started 18-Dec-09.  Though, I haven't
seen it again yet with the images I'm compiling myself from the
git sources.  0.9.9+.

Thanks all,
James


On 15-Jan-10 16:22 James wrote:
> 
> 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
>>
>>
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