[syslinux] Custom .c32 module which can send tcp or udp packets

[Ferenc Wagner]

Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz at cmu.edu> writes:

> --On Friday, March 13, 2009 09:21:53 AM -0700 "H. Peter Anvin"
> <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
>
>> Gene Cumm wrote:
>>>
>>> Peter, is it me or is asking about the capability of writing to a
>>> file, remote or local, coming up more often?
>>>
>>
>> It seems that way.  One of the things that concerns me about making it
>> available as a general solution is gPXE compatibility, which means
>> adding write support to all the gPXE protocols, too.
>
> True, but that (and TFTP put in PXELINUX) seems a lot less scary than
> writing locally, and still pretty useful.

Unfortunately it's TFTP booted computers what are most equipped with
serial console, so this wouldn't help that much, as I see it...

>> Writing a local file is even scarier... you constantly have to be
>> concerned about nuking real data there.
>
> It's too bad that floppy drives have become so uncommon.  I wouldn't
> feel so bad about supporting raw (no filesystem) writes to a
> BIOS-supported floppy, perhaps with the syslinux core warning and
> prompting the user before doing the first write.

But USB emulated hard/floppy "disks" are becoming very common in
modern BIOSes!  Why not use them?  Ask for a starting LBA and a sector
count or scan for a special pattern created by a utility, and write
there.  Inefficient, but file system agnostic.  And maybe simple
enough to include in all variants.  At the same time, it risks real
data again.
-- 
Feri.