iSCSI Boot Firmware Table utilities

This package provides utilities for parsing and utilising the information in an iSCSI Boot Firmware Table (iBFT). The iBFT is a table created by iSCSI boot firmware (such as Etherboot), in order to pass parameters about the iSCSI boot device to the booted operating system.

There are three components:

• a kernel module (ibft) which locates the iBFT and publishes the information found via sysfs in the directory /sys/firmware/ibft,
• a userspace utility (ibftconfig) which uses the information from /sys/firmware/ibft to identify and configure the network device used by the boot firmware, and
• a userspace utility (ibftconnect) which uses the information from /sys/firmware/ibft to log in to the iSCSI target used by the boot firmware.

The idea is that all three components are included in the initrd image used to boot the system, so that the system can configure its network card, log in to the iSCSI target, and mount the root partition from the iSCSI target before proceeding with the rest of the boot. This enables booting Linux disklessly from an iSCSI target.

You can obtain ibft from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ibft/files/

'NOTE: Many of the files on the sourceforge page are only 64 byte long text files with the following message: “Purging old copies from any sites that might mirror SourceForge”.' No other information is available. You may find the SRPM and RPM packages further down the page to be usefull nonetheless.

Please ask any questions on the etherboot-discuss mailing list at etherboot-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net