[syslinux] run FreeBSD "pxeboot" from pxelinux.0?

Mike Hibler mike at flux.utah.edu
Fri Nov 14 13:50:48 PST 2003


Let me dump my complete knowledge of FreeBSD pxeboot:

pxeboot is the standard FreeBSD boot loader "wrapped" with a little
PXE-savvy code.  That code (which is less than 32K) just stashes away
the location of the PXENV struct, relocates the wrapped code to where
it expects to be, goes into protected mode, and executes.

But that isn't quite the whole story.  The boot loader isn't quite the
standard loader, it is linked with a "PXE network device driver" so that
it uses the underlying PXE ROM routines (via the PXENV pointer stashed
earlier) to talk to the network.  So once the loader is running, it will
periodically trap into v86 mode to run the PXE ROM provided UDP functions.

Don't know if this helps...



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