[syslinux] Does pxelinux tftp support BLOCK-SIZE option

[Sowmya.Krishnaswamy at nokia.com]

Hello,

We are using PXELINUX to get the diskless clients up using PXELINUX as boot loader for network boot. The size of the root file system in our case is 14MB and it is taking around 15-20 minutes to get the box up which we need to bring down to 5 minutes, hence the query on TFTP BLOCK SIZE option. 

Since PXELINUX does not support TFTP BLOCKSIZE option does it imply that the root file system should be lot smaller. The maximum reduction in our case would result is something that is 10MB not less. 

Thanks,
Sowmya

-----Original Message-----
From: ext H. Peter Anvin [mailto:hpa at zytor.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 3:22 PM
To: Krishnaswamy Sowmya (NET/MtView)
Cc: syslinux at zytor.com
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Does pxelinux tftp support BLOCK-SIZE option


Sowmya.Krishnaswamy at nokia.com wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Does PXELINUX support tftp BLOCK-SIZE option? If so, what would be the maximum BLOCK-SIZE that can be used for the transfer? The RFC says that the range can be [8 - 65536]. 
> 

No, it does not, and adding support for it would be quite complex due to
the somewhat unfortunate way the blksize option is defined.

tftp-hpa supports a blksize2 option which theoretically could be used by
pxelinux, but it doesn't seem worth it to add support for a proprietary
option.

	-hpa