[syslinux] pxelinux and http

[Michael Blandford]

Timothy Legge wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 14:18, Michael Blandford wrote:
>  
>
>>Is there any possibility pxelinux could have the ability to pull its 
>>kernel/ramdisk/disk images/etc via http instead of tftp?
>>    
>>
>
>Michael
>
>There is some experimental support in Etherboot for http and domain name
>resolution.  Although, if you are downloading pxelinux the fact that
>etherboot can do that is negated because you will use the pxelinux
>download engine.
>  
>
My goal is to keep any decision making away from tftp and put it on a 
web server where I can make programatic decisions.

For example, if a host boots from the network, it requests a bootloader 
via tftp.  That bootloader would pull a config file ( again from tftp 
).  I would like that config file to be very basic and static for all hosts.

If the config file needed vmlinuz or initrd, it would make an http 
request.  Now, the web server could look into a database and decide 
which kernel and ramdisk to hand out.  Maybe you get OS 4.x today but 
tomorrow the web server would hand out 5.x.  It makes maintaining 
multiple builds and hosts much easier than dealing with many config files.

Is this something I could do with etherboot?  I do not want to modify 
the hardware in any way.

Michael

Disclaimer: The content of this message is my personal opinion only and 
although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way 
represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak on 
behalf of Intel on this matter.