[gPXE] Will gPXE support booting from iscsi cd-rom?

[Andrew Bobulsky]

Aldrich,

Windows will, of course, allow you to connect to more than one LUN on an iSCSI target, but I was referring specifically to gPXE's iSCSI initiator.  When you specify your sanboot string, you have to include a LUN.  It *may* be possible to attach more than one iSCSI target if you use keep-san and a second sanboot command.  I assume you would also need to tell gPXE to connect the second iSCSI device as BIOS drive 0x81, which is a configuration setting you can give as a DHCP encapsulated option, but should be able to be set from the command line.

I don't have any idea whether or not it would work though, but I have to admit I'm curious now though ;-)

-Andrew Bobulsky

On May 26, 2010, at 6:03 AM, KernSafe Technology wrote:

> Hi Andrew Bobulsky,
>  
> >if you were to put an iSCSI HDD on LUN 0 and an iSCSI ODD on LUN 1, you'd still need to specify a second iSCSI connection 
>  
> I don't think it need a second iSCSI connection if you put more than one LUNs to one target, most of popular iscsi initiators suppport multiple-lun feature, all the luns use only one connection.
> I think at least two things we need to do:
> 1, Modify int13 interrupt in gpxe and make it support CD-ROM.
> 2, Make target support multiple-lun.
>  
> Windows setup will start to boot from gpxe (A iSCSI target with hold a CD-ROM and a harddisk is already descried by ibft), and then press F6 to install a third-party iSCSI drivers.
> The iSCSI drivers will prepare two devices for windows (a hard drive and a CD-ROM).
>  
> >By the way, is your target OS here XP/2003 setup?
> Yes, I only consider windows at this time.
>  
> KernSafe Technology
> Windows iSCSI SAN provider,
> www.kernsafe.com
>  
> Subject: Re: [gPXE] Will gPXE support booting from iscsi cd-rom?
> From: rulerof at gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 16:07:12 -0400
> CC: gpxe at etherboot.org
> To: kernsafe at hotmail.com
> 
> Aldrich,
> 
> While I read that and though it might be a clever solution, the string that you pass to the sanboot command includes the LUN you want to connect the int13 device to, which defaults to LUN 0.
> 
> So, if you were to put an iSCSI HDD on LUN 0 and an iSCSI ODD on LUN 1, you'd still need to specify a second iSCSI connection :-(
> 
> By the way, is your target OS here XP/2003 setup?
> 
> -Andrew Bobulsky
> 
> On May 24, 2010, at 10:15 PM, KernSafe Technology wrote:
> 
> Hi Shao Miller,
>  
> If it is reachable (modify int13), we can input a hard disk and a CD-ROM into one Target (multiple-LUN), so the workstation will get two SCSI devices from iBFT.
> 
>  
> > Subject: RE: [gPXE] Will gPXE support booting from iscsi cd-rom?
> > Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 12:13:55 -0400
> > From: Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
> > To: kernsafe at hotmail.com
> > CC: gpxe at etherboot.org
> > 
> > Good day Aldrich,
> > 
> > Since there's no relationship between BIOS INT 13h drive numbers and
> > drives that Windows finds, how do you propose to pass a virtual optical
> > disc drive (ODD) to Windows?
> > 
> > For the HDD case, we already pass an iBFT (for iSCSI) or an aBFT (for
> > AoE). I would suggest that you either need additional data associated
> > with those tables to specify ODD as the drive-type, or your initiator
> > could probe the SAN and look for El Torito ISO9660 structure in order to
> > dynamically determine that the SAN is an ODD.
> > 
> > In regards to loading all of this during setup: For Windows XP/2003
> > you'll likely run into some challenges, as A! ndrew mentioned. Have you
> > already found a way to use your F6-extra-drivers-floppy-disk to load
> > networking for the network card along with your initiator?
> > 
> > - Shao Miller
> 
> Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now. _______________________________________________
> gPXE mailing list
> gPXE at etherboot.org
> http://etherboot.org/mailman/listinfo/gpxe
> 
> 
> Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. Get it now.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://etherboot.org/pipermail/gpxe/attachments/20100526/86f9bfb4/attachment-0001.html