Re: diskless boot question

[Gregg Levine]

Hello from Gregg C Levine
I agree as well. Despite what the rest of the folks say about
Grub-Legacy being frozen at that version, and no new features being
accepted.... You are quite welcome to follow the same methods on
Savannah that the other fellow did, just not that dangerous anonymous
method, for adding your patch.

I also suggest that you test it on several different related machines.
Same software, same hardware, same everything else. Just with
different characteristics as to how they work. I also am suggesting
that you join the fun for Grub2. I might also add that its features
need to be tested for non X86 Arches.
--
Gregg C Levine address@hidden
"This signature was once found posting rude
 messages in English in the Moscow subway."


On 2/5/06, Yedidyah Bar-David <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 01:44:03PM +0200, Eli Cohen wrote:
> > Hello,
>
> I am replying only because noone else did yet, although I am probably
> not the right person to do so.
>
> > first I appologize if this is not the right place to post this question.
> > My question is concerned with using grub to do boot of a diskless
> > machine over the network.
> > I have recently posted to Etherboot a network driver for Mellanox
> > Technologies HCA devices, implementing IP Over Infiniband, and I would
> > like to know how to integrate it into the recent release of Grub, i.e.
> > 0.97.
>
> If you intend to ask "How to integrate it so that it works", e.g.
> because you want to use it, then I have no idea - but hopefully looking
> at the sources and documentation should be enough. If you want to ask
> how to get it integrated into the next official version, then I am
> afraid I think it won't. grub legacy is in maintenance mode, and no new
> features are accepted. You can of course post a patch, and people who
> need it will use it. Feng Shuo used to do this, as can be seen here:
> <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=9408>
> You are welcome to continue the tradition - I used to be a user of these
> patches in the past, and I guess there are people that would still want
> them.
>
> Of course, it could be argued that a better investment of your time will
> be working on the networking support of grub2.
>
> > Another thing that I do not quite understand is why should Ehterboot
> > drivers need to intergrate into grub anyway? After all, the network
> > driver is already in memory since it was used to fetch nbgrub or pxegrub
> > images from the network and I would expect grub to use it (the same
> > pxelinux.0 for example does it).
>
> The simple answer - because grub can also boot from disk, without having
> PXE/etherboot load it. You can compile grub with network support, plus
> your favourite nics' drivers, install it on e.g. a floppy, and netboot.
> Of course you can also put etherboot on such a floppy and have it
> netboot nbgrub (or pxegrub), but still there are reasons why you might
> want to boot grub and not etherboot from such a floppy, so having the
> ability is not useless.
>
> There is a driver, also mentioned in the above link, to make it use
> UNDI. Last time I tried, it partially worked for me, but I do not
> remember details anymore. I do remember it had some problems preventing
> me from putting it into production.
> --
> Didi
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bug-grub mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grub
>