Syslinux - Jan 2003 - ISOLinux + PXELinux

Is it possible to have a isolinux based boot CD, where one of the
options is to boot off the network. This would mean,

1. The kernel that one boots into is on the network and not on the CD.
    So easy to make changes.
2. One does not need a 'PXE enabled' network card.

- Murali

Etherboot can be used within a floppy image to boot to the network.
Etherboot when configured and ready only works with the network card you
set it up to run with so it seems that if you want to be able to boot to
the network using different network cards you will need 1 floppy image
per network card model.

www.etherboot.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ganapathy murali krishnan [mailto:gmurali at cs.uchicago.edu]
> Posted At: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 5:35 PM
> Posted To: Syslinux
> Conversation: [syslinux] ISOLinux + PXELinux
> Subject: [syslinux] ISOLinux + PXELinux
> 
> 
> Is it possible to have a isolinux based boot CD, where one of the
> options is to boot off the network. This would mean,
> 
> 1. The kernel that one boots into is on the network and not on the CD.
>     So easy to make changes.
> 2. One does not need a 'PXE enabled' network card.
> 
> - Murali
> 
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ganapathy murali krishnan wrote:
> Is it possible to have a isolinux based boot CD, where one of the
> options is to boot off the network. This would mean,
>
> 1. The kernel that one boots into is on the network and not on the CD.
>    So easy to make changes.
> 2. One does not need a 'PXE enabled' network card.
The thing you might want to do is to use a PXE-emulator-Disk.
"Microsoft has developped a PXE emulation floppy disk to use on
computers not equipped with a real PXE bootrom. This emulation floppy
makes it possible to run XY on computers with no bootrom (but a network
card is still required!)." The generator for this disk ships with
Windows 2000. Using this thing for anything else than RIS will probably
violate the license or something, but thats not my problem, because I
just thought about the possibility, but never actually did it.

Another thing is the etherboot project. They seem to have a boot eeprom
emulator disk, so you can use generated etherboot eeproms on your CD.
Quote from one "alice" mailing list archive google put
out:
> > > Or you change to PXE or netboot/etherboot, which can handle
larger
> > > kernel/initrd images. This makes building bootdisks obsolete and 
loads
> > > much faster. If your NICs don't support net boot you can also
use the
> > > floppy emulation (only a few k on disk, takes less than a second 
to load)
> > > to make it work.
Perhaps, if your NIC supports Netboot, you can write some little program 
to call the BootRom from within ISOLinux... (all what should
be needed is a call to INT18 or to some specific entry point address.)

bye
Christian