[syslinux] PXE Linux and EFI....or Intel MACs

[Jacob Alifrangis]

Apple has a BCM (BIOS Compatibility Module) in its Firmware, so you can
boot a regular X86 Operating system just fine from CD or HDD, what you
cannot do however, is boot from LAN in the BCM.

Partly because there is no PXE Undi Code in the BCM and partly because
Etherboot (Rom-O-Matic.net) does not support the Marvell Yukon Chipsets.

The problem is that Netrestore and Netboot for that matter need to be
running on a MAC or OSX Server for that matter. I'm not going to buy a
mac server OS (Don't want to manage it) and I'm not going to buy a mini
for the sake of doing netrestore.

Netrestore is free and open source, so maybe I can pick out the good
bits and hack something up to get pxelinux working.

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On
Behalf Of Andrew Stuart
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 4:56 PM
To: For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa
Subject: Re: [syslinux] PXE Linux and EFI....or Intel MACs


-----Original Message-----
> From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com]
On
> Behalf Of Andrew Stuart
> Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 3:48 PM
> To: For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] PXE Linux and EFI....or Intel MACs
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>   
>> From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com]
>>     
> On
>   
>> Behalf Of Andrew Stuart
>> Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 2:29 PM
>> To: For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa
>> Subject: Re: [syslinux] PXE Linux and EFI....or Intel MACs
>>
>> Jacob Alifrangis wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> Has anyone gotten PXELinux to work on the Intel Imacs or other EFI
>>>     
>>>       
>> Based
>>   
>>     
>>> Systems?
>>>
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
>> Not I. I haven't had a chance to invest to much time into it though.
>>
>> One thing I found, with ppc, and early? (haven't tested anything 
>> recently) intel machines did not respect the next-server directive. 
>> Netbooting wouldn't work at all unless the dhcp server and tftp
server
>>     
>
>   
>> were running on the same host.
>>
>> I am still quite interested in getting this working, but I am not a 
>> programmer.
>>
>> -A
>>
>>   
>>     
>
> Jacob Alifrangis wrote:
>   
>> That doesn't seem to be the case with the intel Macs,
>>
>> I believe that the Intel MACs boot code needs to receive a BSDP
Packet
>> (Boot Service Discovery Protocol). I think that With some trying I
can
>> get this to work, I'll keep you updated (It's going to involve some
>> crafy .net programming though)
>>     
>
> Please post at the bottom, it makes reading the digest, etc easier.
>
> To make sure I was clear, it seemed to be an issue with at least the 
> earlier firmware on the intel line. I did just test it with a recent
mbp
>
> and it worked fine.
> Have you got your macs netbooting? If you haven't got that far, I can 
> try to dig up some of the information I found / used to be able to 
> netboot NetRestore.. but that bypasses syslinux.
>
> -A
>
>   
Jacob Alifrangis wrote:
> The problem is that we are trying to deploy windows to the new MBPs,
so
> the apple stuff really isn't going to work.
>
> I need to be able to start syslinux and do the regular RIS/WDS stuff.
Not sure if this will work for you, but check out NetRestore. 
http://www.bombich.com/software/netrestore.html
It supports deploying of windows. The reason I am not sure, is I don't 
know if you can deploy just windows, and I don't know if it supports 
Leopard yet.

Unless you know something I don't, loading Windows on a mac without 'the

apple stuff' is not possible at this time. If I recall correctly 
Microsoft removed
EFI support from their products with the exclusion of ia64 branches. It 
is my understanding, that you will *require* bootcamp to support 
windows, but again, I haven't kept up on that.

-A

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