[gPXE] Nature of EFI aspect of gPXE?
Glenn Brown
glenn at myri.com
Sat May 22 22:15:51 EDT 2010
I'd like to echo the plea for clarity. I've written EFI-1.1 and
UEFI-2.0 drivers, a gPXE driver, and Etherboot drivers, and I still
don't understand even the most basic details of gPXE EFI support.
Here are some things I don't understand:
What interface is supported by .efidrv? EFI device
drivers can interface via the Simple Network Protocol (SNP) interface or
the UNDI32/64 (Undi) interface. Does gPXE use one of these 'standard'
interfaces?
Does .efidrv reside above or below the EFI device driver interface?
That is, is it a way to provide a device driver to be used by EFI
clients, or is a shim to interface a gPXE boot stack over an underlying
EFI driver? That is, is it a provider or consumer of the interface?
Does gPXE support EFI-1.1 (Mac) or UEFI-2.0 (everyone else) or both?
Under what circumstances is each supported.
What services are provide by the .efirom? Is it just a PCI expansion
ROM holding the EFI driver? Something more? Something else?
What interface does the .efi application layer itself over?
In other words, simple stack protocol diagrams and a clear overview seem
to be missing from the gPXE documentation. They would be most helpful
considering that 'efi' is a fairly generic term that could refer to any
part of the EFI protocol stack...
--Glenn
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