[syslinux] (no subject)

[Paolo Salvan]

Hi all!

...As I'm the author of
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=190646
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80408
(for Steven: these two links are for the SAME file...)

...I'd like to say some comments, to let you understand what the peculiarities
of my approch are...

My approach is more minimalistic: etherboot have already the capabilities to
build a multi-driver boot image, and can autodetect the correct driver to start
(using the PCI-ID, but it also try the ISA drivers in sequence if no PCI NIC is
found...), so I simply built an all-driver etherboot image, without the need of
ethersel (so from floppy I directly boot etherboot, and from CD/HD I use
isolinux/syslinux simply as an etherboot loader, but without using any advanced
capabilities of syslinux)

This lead to a single big multi-driver image, very handy to use (but not very
pubblicized)... the only drawback I know of my approach is that I knocked
against an etherboot memory limitation: the multi-driver is compressed, and
when it is uncompressed, it is temporaily kept in low-memory (the dear old
640Kb limitation...), and so for some built I have to exlude 1 or 2 rarely used
big drivers to get it fit in memory... but it seems that in the future
etherboot versions this limit will be overcomed...

This is the boot sequence of my approach:
Boot
--> SYSLINUX if HD, or ISOLINUX if CD, or nothing if floppy
--> Etherboot (PXE stack, downloads PXELINUX)
--> PXELINUX (downloaded from server and ran, downloads Linux kernel)
--> Linux

The etherboot.anadex.de loader have an automated HD installer... that, in a
simplified version, I'd like to include in my built (but I haven't had the time
to do it...), as it check at install-time the correct etehrboot driver to copy
on the HD, while I could simply install my simgle multidriver image and stop...
the correct driver will be found at run-time...

Paolo Salvan
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Josh Lehan ha scritto:

> Steven wrote:
>
>> Hi Josh:
>> There is a similar one in
>> http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=190646
>> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80408
>> I tried it compiled it in etherboot 5.4.0 and 5.4.1, and it works.
>> Could you please tell me what's the difference between yours and that one ?
>> Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
> Thanks for telling me about these!  I didn't know about them.
>
> Taking a quick look, it seems that they all try to accomplish the same thing,
with a few variations.  A goal of mine was to make something that was as "lean
and mean" as possible, and easily reproducable.  It's a very thin layer over
SYSLINUX and Etherboot.
>
> That makes 4 variations of "PXE-on-a-disk" that I know of: mine, the 2 you
mentioned, and etherboot.anadex.de.  Interesting.  I wonder what the
strengths/weaknesses of each one are?
>
> Josh Lehan
> jlehan at scyld.com
>
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