[syslinux] Locally-loaded syslinux.efi with remote HTTP config?

[Gene Cumm]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 5:33 PM, H. Peter Anvin via Syslinux
<syslinux at zytor.com> wrote:
> On 06/18/16 03:50, Gene Cumm via Syslinux wrote:
>>
>> UEFI is very different.  There's no option ROM nor PXE stack.
>> Generally speaking, the underlying UEFI system has to get NIC drivers
>> (commonly built-in) and initialize the network through a round of DHCP
>> or static configuration.  I don't know of any UEFI overview/tutorial
>> without Googling for one.
>>
>
> Actually, for an external NIC there is still an option ROM.  The UEFI
> network stack is referred to as "PXE" even though it is nothing like the
> BIOS PXE stack.

I misspoke.  I meant there's no option ROM application executed from
the option ROM on the NIC like BIOS.  The UEFI system should be
loading a NIC driver from the option ROM, if prepared properly with a
driver for the proper architecture.

>>>> would talk only TFTP, doesn't syslinux.efi bypass that and instead
>>>> use the underlying EFI firmware's TCP capability to do an HTTP
>>>> transfer? So then in principle couldn't it also do that whether or
>>
>> Actually, for TFTP syslinux.efi uses UDPv4Sb instead of one of the TFTP methods.
>
> The real question is whether or not the UEFI firmware actually
> initializes the network stack (or if there is a way to do so that
> actually works on real systems) when not booted from the network.  I
> will try to research that question.

When poking around with the UEFI shells, the systems I've seen appear
to have the bindings in place but just lack IPv4 addressing.  For
single-NIC systems, this should be relatively easy.

-- 
-Gene