Re: [RFC] netboot changes

[Thierry Laronde]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 02:28:07PM +0900, OKUJI Yoshinori wrote:
> 
> Anyway, I don't think it would be worth to update the network drivers
> (unless you have a card GRUB doesn't support), because I'm planning
> not to use Etherboot drivers. I'll explain my "near future plans"
> soon.

Just a question (partly related to netboot). I plan to add the ability
to use kind of "grub environment variables" allowing the reuse of
informations obtained (say that an enhanced bootp could read the `bf'
entry and put it in KERNEL, then the command : kernel $KERNEL would
allow the automatic booting, etc...). Do you agree with this way ?

Other question, related to some experiments I made with netbooting. At
the moment, the etherboot drivers are included at compile time to the
grub. If one wants to boot the drivers themselves, this is not possible
because the drivers are not multiboot compliant or a.out or ELF (kernel 
command can not be used), and you can not chainload them (because of the
format), and cannot chainload the etherboot loader because it expects
the driver to be at the very next block, and, I suppose, "adjoining" (no
several lists of blocks spread all around). Do you think it would be worth
the effort to create a kind of multiboot compliant loader able to load
these files considered as drivers (with the ability to have this kind of
"drivers" kept outside from the grub kernel, and having only two things
to keep in grub : the ability to scan the pci buses; a loader --- kind
of exec command --- able to load these external programs).

Regards,
-- 
Thierry LARONDE <address@hidden>
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