Thanks a lot. <br> Something is still not clear to me though. I'm using gPXE on a diskless workstation. I use gPXE to download a small ramdisk. Then I use this one to do a secondary download of the remaining contents. <br>
After the download I can do a pivot_root and switch to the new filesystem.<br><br>Yet the space I have left is 1.5G (since I'm doing first download with gPXE and the image can't be bigger than 1.5GB). <br><br>I'm sure I'm missing something, but having everything in RAM, after I download a small ramdisk with gPXE, where do I save the content of the secondary download (which is going to be around 4G)?<br>
<br>Thanks,<br> Luca<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:37 AM, H. Peter Anvin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:hpa@zytor.com" target="_blank">hpa@zytor.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div>On 12/11/2009 07:28 AM, Luca wrote:<br>
> Thank you. So gPXE can address 4GB of RAM.<br>
><br>
> Then, if I gPXE boot with the following script<br>
><br>
> #!gpxe<br>
><br>
> kernel <a href="https://192.168.1.189/vmlinuz" target="_blank">https://192.168.1.189/vmlinuz</a> root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc<br>
> initrd <a href="https://192.168.1.189/ramdisk.img" target="_blank">https://192.168.1.189/ramdisk.img</a><br>
> boot<br>
><br>
> the ramdisk's size could not exceed 2G (considering gPXE has to download<br>
> it and then load it in memory)?<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>Something like that. In practice it is probably closer to 1-1.5 GB.<br>
<br>
You also don't want to actually use a ramdisk -- initramfs is a *lot*<br>
more efficient.<br>
<br>
However, realistically you probably don't want to do that. Instead you<br>
want to bring up a reasonably small ramdisk that contains the contents<br>
needed to do a secondary download of the remaining contents. The<br>
reasons are very simple: no need to double buffer, Linux has a *much*<br>
more advanced IP stack that gPXE (for, I hope, obvious reasons -- not<br>
picking on gPXE here), and no 4 GB limitation.<br>
<br>
As such, you should get much better preformace that way, and when you're<br>
talking gigabytes, that matters.<br>
<br>
-hpa<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center<br>
I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.<br>
<br>
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