[syslinux] alternate tftp server

Jeffrey Hutzelman jhutz at cmu.edu
Thu Apr 3 10:00:40 PDT 2008


--On Wednesday, April 02, 2008 04:47:31 PM -0700 a178235 
<a178235 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   It appears that you are the author of bioschk.asm and lmcheck.asm?

Yes.  I really should put some of this stuff on a web page someplace, but 
I'm sort of hoping Peter will distribute some of it with SYSLINUX and 
thereby save me the trouble. :-)

Though actually, for bioschk I have a VMWare-based test framework and about 
a hundred tests that I don't think I've distributed.

> I
> find bioschk.asm very useful and would like to know what other modules
> that Carnegie Mellon University is using.

Well, besides the ones you've seen, I have a 'vmboot' module which looks 
for a VMWare "guest variable" called "vmboot", and if it exists, uses the 
contents as a SYSLINUX command line.  Otherwise it just boots the default. 
The idea is that OS installers invoke vmboot from the 'ontimeout' hook, and 
if the machine happens to be a VMWare VM, the host can control what gets 
booted.  We use this in some tools we have for doing unattended 
installation of virtual machines (on an appropriate host running VMware 
server, I can run a command like 'vm-provision -t amd64_f7 <hostname>', and 
an hour later I have a brand-new F7 box).

I also have a 'vmshut' module which shuts down a VM; I use that in the 
aforementioned test suite.


> Now that loading Linux with
> gPXELinux works over HTTP, it would be great to do the same thing with
> WinPE. Would you be willing to share with us the boot order that you are
> currently using?

I'm not sure what you're asking.  In our environment, machines that netboot 
get a configuration which immediately runs bioschk with a script very 
similar to the example included in the source -- it checks for the Dell 
Optiplex GX620 BIOS A11 problem, offers to upgrade if it finds that 
version, and otherwise runs menu.c32.  The menu provides options for 
installing various operating systems (Windows and Fedora), BIOS upgrades, 
and a few tools like memtest86.

> It would also be nice if bioschk.cbt became part of
> the SYSLINUX package as well as other tested and working modules.

Peter is welcome to distribute bioschk or any of my modules.  But in the 
case of that particular module, I should probably pass along a copy of the 
test suite if he chooses to do so (it requires a bit of infrastructure to 
use, but was _very_ useful in tracking down bugs).

-- Jeff




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