[syslinux] ISOLinux + PXELinux

[Peter Lister]

> Etherboot can be used within a floppy image to boot to the network.

Etherboot can also be booted as a "LILO friendly" image, i.e.
sufficiently like a Linux kernel that most boot loaders are happy to
load it; the main use is so that it can be booted by LILO from a hard
disk, so I guess you can do this with isolinux? Etherboot can also be an
ELF image, if that helps.

> Etherboot when configured and ready only works with the network card you
> set it up to run with so it seems that if you want to be able to boot to
> the network using different network cards you will need 1 floppy image
> per network card model.

Support for multiple drivers is planned. One can use PXE to load
Etherboot (lzpxe image type), but the new UNDI driver is for ia64 only.
:( Hopefully a i386 PXE driver will happen soon. Of course, you can only
use a UNDI driver if PXE is initialised by you nic and/or bios - which
it probably will not be if you have booted from a CD, so you'll need nic
driver(s) anyway. Extending Etherboot to export (part of) the PXE is
being seriously suggested.