[syslinux] Netboot and PXELINUX

Peter Lister P.Lister at sychron.com
Fri Sep 5 09:17:52 PDT 2003


> I have just been informed that Netboot (http://netboot.sourceforge.net/) 
> can be used to produce PXE boot ROMs.  I wonder if anyone has tried 
> running this combination with PXELINUX?  This is obviously a really big 
> deal... :)

There appears to be no announcement to that effect on the netboot
site, other than a general statement that PXE is one of the goals.
Given that there was no reaction to HPA's comment, I assume that this
was a false alarm.

There exist (to my knowledge) 3 open source network bootware projects,
distinguished largely by which nic drivers they use.

 Netboot uses DOS / crynwr drivers- fine for legacy NICs, but largely
 irrelevant to people using modern hardware.

 NILO uses OSkit's adapted OS drivers. NILO seems dormant, but some
 code does exist, so it may be of use.

 Etherboot uses it's own packet drivers which support just about every
 recent NIC.  It is being actively developed (e.g. IA64 and multicast)
 and has been integrated with Linuxbios, and so could be used with
 bochs / ADLO for those who want to roll their own BIOS for legacy
 OSes. 

There is no real reason to have an open source PXE integrated with any
specific set of drivers; in fact the higher level functionality has
much more in common with BIOS efforts like bochs.

That said, Etherboot is the likeliest candidiate: PXE progress has
been ad hoc as people have needed individual components.  Though there
is general agreement on etherboot-developers that would it good to aim
for enough PXE support such that pxelinux and other common NBPs will
run on top of it, Etherboot users appear unmotivated to develop PXE
because they generally just don't *need* it. :)

I get the impression that a final push is needed to get the last few
bits of PXE working on Etherboot.  Ken has just released Etherboot
5.2, which separates off the boot menus previously integrated into
Etherboot into a separate loadable module.  So... this would seem like
a good opportunity to look at putting this level of functionality into
a module, so that a module implementing PXE (or e.g. GRUB or a non-PXE
SYSLINUX) can sit above the driver code.

Thoughts?  Does anyone from the pxelinux (or e.g. bochs) community who
would really to USE an open source PXE feel inclined to "own" the
development of open source PXE as distinct from the network firmware
on which it might use?  It occurs to me that it would similarly make
sense to spin off MEMDISK from the rest of SYSLINUX; these projects
are quite similar in that they reproduce legacy BIOS APIs to provide
virtualised hardware just how bootable images expect it.






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