Syslinux - Feb 2004 - PXELinux; Question regarding UNDI

I have already a running automated Deployment system using
pxelinux and tftd and a 1,44 floppy image (memdisk) with ms-dos and
3-com undi drivers. 

The whole thing is working good, and i am not unhappy about it.
But, the dos image solution has a few disadvanatages, because
i cannot find a mtftp client for ms-dos to deploy a lot of system
at the same time.

Under linux such client exists, but i want to have a linux
image that is also working with a UNDI Driver, otherwise i always need
to embeed new network drivers.

Has anybody a working linux image with undi, or at least the linux
undi network drivers?


Thanks Markus

"Huber Markus" <huber at hsn.at> writes:
> But, the dos image solution has a few disadvanatages, because i
> cannot find a mtftp client for ms-dos to deploy a lot of system at
> the same time.
> 
> Under linux such client exists, but i want to have a linux image
> that is also working with a UNDI Driver, otherwise i always need to
> embeed new network drivers.
> 
> Has anybody a working linux image with undi, or at least the linux
> undi network drivers?
As far as I know, there are no Linux UNDI network drivers.  UNDI
stacks tend to run in real mode, so Linux has no good way to interact
with them.

But they are buggy anyway, so you would rather use the real up-to-date
Linux drivers.  And you need Linux drivers for your mass storage
devices, anyway.  So really, there is no way to avoid worrying about
drivers if you want to use Linux.

That said, you should take a look at my project
(http://unattended.sourceforge.net/).  Right now, we use
PXELINUX+memdisk to start a DOS boot disk with universal UNDI drivers,
just like you.

But as you have noticed, DOS has many disadvantages.  So I am now
working on a Linux-based boot disk for installing Windows.  In fact, I
just got winnt.exe running under doesmu from a PXE Linux boot
yesterday.  You should be able to adapt this for your application.

See:

  http://www.mail-archive.com/unattended-info at
lists.sourceforge.net/msg01030.html

And more relevantly:

  http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=7221627
  http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=7230520

My little mini-distribution autoprobes the network and mass storage
hardware to load the appropriate drivers.  The Linux 2.6 hotplug
support (/sys and modules.pcimap) makes this fairly easy.

It is still pre-alpha, but the basic plumbing seems to work so I am
looking for testers.  Success/failure reports and any other
contributions are welcome.

 - Pat