Syslinux - May 2009 - PXELINUX, pxechain.com and Etherboot

Hi,

Anyone has tried to use pxechain with Etherboot? Here is my problem:

The Etherboot client had no problem to get the list of install servers 
manual from the pxechain. But didn't matter which server was chosen, 
Etherboot client always tried to use the first server to do the 
installation.  Etherboot 5.4 was used.

What the problem may be? PXEchain or Etherboot?

Thanks,
Joyce


--

--On Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:25:31 AM -0700 Joyce Yu <Joyce.Yu at
Sun.COM>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Anyone has tried to use pxechain with Etherboot? Here is my problem:
>
> The Etherboot client had no problem to get the list of install servers
> manual from the pxechain. But didn't matter which server was chosen,
> Etherboot client always tried to use the first server to do the
> installation.  Etherboot 5.4 was used.
>
> What the problem may be? PXEchain or Etherboot?
I don't think we've ever tried it with etherboot.  Can you show us a
copy
of your PXELINUX configuration?

-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <jhutz+ at cmu.edu>
   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

Joyce Yu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Anyone has tried to use pxechain with Etherboot? Here is my problem:
> 
> The Etherboot client had no problem to get the list of install servers 
> manual from the pxechain. But didn't matter which server was chosen, 
> Etherboot client always tried to use the first server to do the 
> installation.  Etherboot 5.4 was used.
> 
> What the problem may be? PXEchain or Etherboot?
> 
I seem to vaguely recall that Etherboot doesn't preserve changes to the
in-memory copy of the DHCP packet.  gPXE fixes this, I believe.  Anyone
remember?

	-hpa

On Wednesday 13 May 2009 19:25:31 Joyce Yu wrote:
> Anyone has tried to use pxechain with Etherboot? Here is my problem:
>
> The Etherboot client had no problem to get the list of install servers
> manual from the pxechain. But didn't matter which server was chosen,
> Etherboot client always tried to use the first server to do the
> installation.  Etherboot 5.4 was used.
>
> What the problem may be? PXEchain or Etherboot?
Joyce,

Etherboot 5.4 is no longer developed or supported.  As has been mentioned to 
you personally several times over the past few years, you should be 
developing your driver within gPXE instead.

I typically expect to complete development of a gPXE driver for a new 10GigE 
card within two weeks.  Instead of spending years of time and effort in 
tracking down bugs in Etherboot that have long been fixed in gPXE, you could 
have developed (or funded) your driver within gPXE many times over.

Why do you continue to ignore this advice?

Michael

Op 20090513 om 23:00 schreef Michael Brown:
> On Wednesday 13 May 2009 22:38:37 Joyce Yu wrote:
> > Do you know where is the fixes in the gPXE? How should I port it to
the
> > Etherboot?
> 
> The relevant code portion in gPXE is completely rewritten from the relevant
> code in Etherboot.  There is no way to backport this fix; there is no
common
> code to patch.
A workaround to the original problem is

  Keep all the network interface cards with the Etherboot EPROMs

  Configure the DHCP server so that

     Etherboot fetches and starts gPXE

     gPXE fetches and starts pxechain.com



Cheers
Geert Stappers

On 05/13/09 10:16 PM, Geert Stappers wrote:
> Op 20090513 om 23:00 schreef Michael Brown:
>   
>> On Wednesday 13 May 2009 22:38:37 Joyce Yu wrote:
>>     
>>> Do you know where is the fixes in the gPXE? How should I port it to
the
>>> Etherboot?
>>>       
>> The relevant code portion in gPXE is completely rewritten from the
relevant
>> code in Etherboot.  There is no way to backport this fix; there is no
common
>> code to patch.
>>     
>
> A workaround to the original problem is
>
>   Keep all the network interface cards with the Etherboot EPROMs
>
>   Configure the DHCP server so that
>
>      Etherboot fetches and starts gPXE
>
>      gPXE fetches and starts pxechain.com
>   
Can I some details on this?

Thanks,
Joyce

>
>
> Cheers
> Geert Stappers
>
> _______________________________________________
> Syslinux mailing list
> Submissions to Syslinux at zytor.com
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
>
>   

--

Op 20090515 om 08:38 schreef Joyce Yu:
> On 05/13/09 10:16 PM, Geert Stappers wrote:
>> Op 20090513 om 23:00 schreef Michael Brown:
>>   
>>> On Wednesday 13 May 2009 22:38:37 Joyce Yu wrote:
>>>     
>>>> Do you know where is the fixes in the gPXE? How should I port
it to the
>>>> Etherboot?
>>>>       
>>> The relevant code portion in gPXE is completely rewritten from the 
>>> relevant code in Etherboot.  There is no way to backport this fix; 
>>> there is no common code to patch.
>>>     
>>
>> A workaround to the original problem is
>>
>>   Keep all the network interface cards with the Etherboot EPROMs
>>
>>   Configure the DHCP server so that
>>
>>      Etherboot fetches and starts gPXE
>>
>>      gPXE fetches and starts pxechain.com
>>   
> Can I some details on this?
It is http://etherboot.org/wiki/pxechaining that I was thinking about.


Cheers
Geert Stappers

Michael,

I just tried to use gPXE 0.9.7 to  load Solaris. It works.  I will port 
the drivers to the gPXE 0.9.7.

Thanks a lot,
Joyce
 

On 05/19/09 12:44 AM, Michael Brown wrote:
> On Tuesday 19 May 2009 06:06:13 Joyce Yu wrote:
>   
>> I am really not using any special software. Under the
/tftpboot/solaris:
>>
>>  <snip>
>>
>> *S11_112_pxegrub is the boot loader that shipped with Solaris image
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>         host lab-s2 {  <================== MY SYSTEM loading Solaris
>>                 hardware ethernet xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;
>>                 fixed-address xx.xx.xx.xx;
>>                 filename "solaris/S11_112_pxegrub";
>>         }
>>     
>
> The software that you are using is therefore "pxegrub".
>
> Solaris ships with a very heavily modified version of pxegrub that is known
to
> break on versions of gPXE prior to Jan 27 2009.  You will need to be using 
> the current gPXE tree (or the 0.9.7 release, which is recent enough).
>
> Please run
>
>   git describe --tags
>
> in your gPXE tree, and report the output here.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael
>   

--

On Thursday 28 May 2009 18:53:34 Joyce Yu wrote:
> I just tried to use gPXE 0.9.7 to  load Solaris. It works.  I will port
> the drivers to the gPXE 0.9.7.
Excellent news!

I look forward to being able to merge your driver in to the gPXE tree.

Michael

Michael,

I looked at a few NIC drivers in under gpxe0.9.7. It seems there are two 
kinds of them. One kinds are still using all the etherboot interfaces 
with some changes like:
------------------------------------------------
*. Use nic structure instead of dev*
*. Add the following new structures:*
static struct nic_operations xxxx_operations = {
    .connect  = dummy_connect,
    .poll  = xxxx_poll,
    .transmit  = xxxx_transmit,
    .irq = xxxx_irq,
};
static struct pci_device_id xxxx_nics[] = {
    PCI_ROM(0xaaaa, 0xbbbb, "xxxx", "abcdefg...."),
};
PCI_DRIVER ( xxxx_driver, xxxx_nics, PCI_NO_CLASS );
*. pci->name changed to pci->driver_name*
*. Use nic->nic_op    = &xxxx_operations to replace similar ones in 
etherboot at the end of the xxxx_probe()*
*. Add these at the end of the file:*
DRIVER ( "xxxx/PCI", nic_driver, pci_driver, xxxx_driver,
     xxxx_probe, xxxx_disable );
/*
 * Local variables:
 *  c-basic-offset: 8
 *  c-indent-level: 8
 *  tab-width: 8
 * End:
 */
----------------------------------

The other kinds are using LINUX NIC driver like interfaces, such as:
-----------------------------------
static struct net_device_operations xxxx_operations = {
        .open           = xxxx_open,
        .close          = xxxx_close,
        .transmit       = xxxx_transmit,
        .poll           = xxxx_poll,
        .irq            = xxxx_irq,
};

struct pci_driver xxxx_driver __pci_driver = {
        .ids = xxxx_nics,
        .id_count = (sizeof (xxxx_nics) / sizeof (xxxx_nics[0])),
        .probe = xxxx_probe,
        .remove = xxxx_remove,
};

xxxx_probe() does some HW initialization, but leave some to the 
xxxx_open(). This is the difference between etherboot xxxx_probe() and 
gpxe xxxx_probe(), am I right?
---------------------------------------

I want to know if both implementations are working? What is the benefit 
if the new ones are used?

Thanks a lot,
Joyce



On 05/28/09 11:26, Michael Brown wrote:
> On Thursday 28 May 2009 18:53:34 Joyce Yu wrote:
>   
>> I just tried to use gPXE 0.9.7 to  load Solaris. It works.  I will port
>> the drivers to the gPXE 0.9.7.
>>     
>
> Excellent news!
>
> I look forward to being able to merge your driver in to the gPXE tree.
>
> Michael
>   

--