Syslinux - Dec 2002 - any way to use binary kernel modules + pxe booting?

So, I'm trying to boot using PXE + NFS root filesystem, to boot a kernel
that can reimage machines. This has been quite successful for me, until
just recently where I ran into a motherboard that had a broadcom
ethernet chipset - the broadcom driver is binary only. I can boot a
kernel using PXE and load the broadcom driver using a custom initrd, but
don't know how to then NFS mount the root filesystem. Any suggestions?
Alternatively, is there a better way to get the module loaded so I can
NFS mount the root fs? Either way, thanks for pxelinux - it's made my
life as a sysadmin much easier...

-- 
David Fallon <davef at d2.com>
Digital Domain

Hi,

David Fallon <davef at d2.com> schrieb am 31.12.02
19:45:31:
> So, I'm trying to boot using PXE + NFS root filesystem, to boot a
kernel
> that can reimage machines. This has been quite successful for me, until
> just recently where I ran into a motherboard that had a broadcom
> ethernet chipset - the broadcom driver is binary only. I can boot a
> kernel using PXE and load the broadcom driver using a custom initrd, but
> don't know how to then NFS mount the root filesystem. Any suggestions?
There are at least two ways for a 2.4.x kernel to mount the root filesystem
from an initrd: The old change_root-mechanism (root FS is mounted after
/linuxrc exits, uses 'standard' root= and nfsroot= parameters). This one
is
coming from the 2.0 series (or even 1.x? Don't recall that ...), and is
obsoleted
by the new pivot_root method existing in 2.4.x+: The /linuxrc is executed as 
init, mounts the root FS, and calls the pivot_root system call to define this as
the new root filesystem.

See the /Documentation tree of your preferred kernel to learn more.
> Alternatively, is there a better way to get the module loaded so I can
> NFS mount the root fs? 
The one possibility is to compile everything in the kernel, the other one to use
an initrd and load the modules there (btw: even with open-source drivers). 
I don't know a third one.

Regards,

Josef

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