[gPXE] Cramming two drivers into one ROM?

Huan Truong hnt7438 at truman.edu
Fri Nov 5 21:06:36 EDT 2010


Hi everyone --

I'm running into another tough problem. Initially I used to netboot by
3com 100Mbps cards. 

As I was advancing on gPXE, I realized that I can flash the Boot ROM to
the Option ROM area of the BIOS to make the gigabit LAN-On-Motherboard
work without the need for 3com cards. However, flashing the Option ROM
on my Dell stations -- while it works -- it is too dangerous, as my
Dells don't have a backup BIOS chip or anything to recover from a bad
BIOS flash. So I decided to have 3com 905 cards to serve as dummy
ROM-carriers for my gigabit LOM. It works, but there is one
inconvenience about it is that doing so will make the 3com cards not
self-hosting -- they can't boot by themselves anymore, but have to
depend on something else to boot.

I wonder if I can cram both the driver for the 3com card and the driver
for the Gigabit LOM (tg3) into one ROM file. This would make the 3com
cards self-hosting (if no compatible LOM is found). Anyone has done that
-- if that's at all possible. I'm willing to apply some hacks, but gPXE
makefile is kind of too big and confusing to me.


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