[syslinux] failed when boot the kernel image on the hard disk from syslinux on a floppy

[Vance Turner]

Peter, from how I have been playing with the iSCSi initiators, the OS
doesn't know that it is iSCSI. The hardware layer is presenting the
iSCSI device just as if it is a local device. Windows thinks that it is
just s scsi disk internal. Now if you use windows software for the iSCSI
then yes you would have that problem, but configuring the iSCSI on iSCSI
adapters, or virtual environments removes the OS from the equation. What
I am thinking is more of what xVM and VMWARE do for the OS install, and
working something like that into PXELINUX. xVM is open source now.  

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On
Behalf Of H. Peter Anvin
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 11:16 AM
To: For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa
Subject: Re: [syslinux] failed when boot the kernel image on the hard
disk from syslinux on a floppy

Vance Turner wrote:
> Peter, I am trying to find someone at Microsoft that can speak to the
> technical issues of RIS and Windows Deployment Toolkit 2008. Seems
they
> are clueless as to this in general. I am to the point of pulling my
hair
> out on this stuff.
> 
> With the advent of iSCSI, why can't we just modify pxelinux to be
iSCSI
> aware, and we can define the CD Images as iSCSI targets on some
> directory structure. There we can also point to some generic install
> script to fire off the automated installation. Kickstart, and Yast are
> already there for Linux RHEL and SUSE, Solaris would fit into this
> easily, Windows wouldn't even know it was a network install.
> 
> Have you looked into this?

gPXE/gpxelinux.0 already support iSCSI, although I don't know if it 
contains the code necessary to boot from a CD-ROM image over iSCSI.

However, the problem still is all the same: if the OS you're trying to 
boot doesn't have the appropriate drivers and/or doesn't handle CD-ROM 
off the transport (in this case iSCSI) it doesn't do anything.

I don't know which operating systems, if any, would support CD-ROMs over

iSCSI.  They would obviously have to be quite new, but if this is a 
feature that is getting common, then it would be easy enough to add the 
handful of extra support one would need to deal with El Torito... like 
anything else, though, it's a "simple matter of programming."

	-hpa

_______________________________________________
SYSLINUX mailing list
Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com
Unsubscribe or set options at:
http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.