Re: [Etherboot-developers] gPXE and GRUB2

[Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko]

Thomas Miletich wrote:
> Hello
>
> On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 12:28 AM, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>   
>> Hello, all. I'm currently importing gPXE into grub-extras to allow a
>> tighter interraction and integration. I would like to discuss
>> collaboration between our two projects.
>>     
>
> To be clear, what is the goal goal of this project? I assume the goal
> is to have networking functions in GRUB 2, as it was the case for GRUB
> using the etherboot code. Is that correct?
>   
The goal is to have networking in GRUB2 and it being easily accessible
from e.g. boot scripts. This would allow usage cases like:
dhcp
configfile (http,mydistro.org)/grub2/netinstall.cfg
Such usage cases make netbook recovery easy if e.g. disk failure.
One of my current goals is to do this for Yeeloong. It has mipsel CPU
and AFAIK gPXE isn't ported to this platform but GRUB2 partially is (I'm
working on it). If GRUB2 is in ROM this makes an intuitive recovery system
Similar goal can be achieved on coreboot too.
As Thomas proposed perhaps we could do an IRC meeting about this
subject. If you're interested reply this e-mail saying when you're available
> I think the fastest way to make GRUB2 use gPXE's networking features
> is to use both of them as they currently are. GRUB2 can be integrated
> as a embedded image into gPXE. gPXE boots, does a DHCP requests,
> executes a PXE capable GRUB 2 image and GRUB 2 uses the standard PXE
> functions.
>   
It's a good usage. Unfortunately it doesn't allow gPXE to accompany us
on all supported platforms and makes installation a bit tricky.
> This approach works pretty well in the form of gpxelinux. gpxelinux is
> basically a gPXE image with pxelinux.0 from the syslinux suite
> integrated. This way pxelinux.0 is also able to use the more advanced
> features of gPXE, like HTTP.
> This also eliminates the problem of getting patches upstream, as both
> codebases would be independent. syslinux includes a mainline gPXE code
> directory; the Makefile builds gPXE and embeds pxelinux.0 to create
> gpxelinux. Once in a while you do a git pull to keep the gPXE code up
> to date. Patches can go directly to the etherboot project.
>
> I don't know if you want the long-term solution to look like this, but
> this approach could be a short-term solution to get it up and running
> without spending too much time in adapting the gPXE code to GRUB.
> I also don't know if this works with your license policy.
>
> There are also still problems preventing GRUB 2 from running with
> gPXE. Please have a look at the thread at
> http://etherboot.org/pipermail/gpxe/2009-November/000008.html
> Having someone looking into this from the GRUB side of things would be 
> helpful.
>
>
>   
After I finish some of high-priority pending tasks I'll look into it
>> <snip>
>> 4) A lot of drivers are GPLv2-only. Would it be possible to relicence
>> them as GPLv2+ ?
>>
>>     
>
> Many drivers are still from Etherboot, and therefore quite old. I
> don't think it will be easy to reach all the copyright holders of a
> driver. Most drivers are derived from Linux and the original authors
> would have to be asked too.
>
>
> Thanks
> Thomas
>
>   


-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko

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