Re: Re: [Etherboot-developers] http://rom-o-matic.net updated with Etherboot-5.4.0

On Apr 27, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Samuel Clements wrote:
>> Now, it turns out that you could just load PXELINUX from your Intel 
>> EEPRO100 card's PXE, and it would likely work fine, but you do get 
>> extra style points (and mad respect :) for doing the:
>>     PXE -> Etherboot -> PXELINUX -> memtestbin
>
> Well, this is all well and good (and interesting like you said) but 
> can I use PXELINUX to load DOS boot images?

Yes, you can.  Check out:

     http://syslinux.zytor.com/memdisk.php

and

     http://syslinux.zytor.com/faq.php#otherOS

> I'm actually not using (or loading) Linux at all. The only ELF image 
> I'm using is memtest and everything else is nbi'd MS-DOS images for 
> running Ghost, etc. I'll gladly switch to using PXELINUX, but it seems 
> somewhat convoluted when I've no intention of using it to load Linux!

The SYSLINUX family ( SYSLINUX | PXELINUX | ISOLINUX | EXTLINUX | 
MEMDISK ) are quite flexible.

>  Also, doesn't this point to perhaps a different problem with 
> etherboot since the older versions work and load the ELF image of 
> memtest via a nfl menu when the new versions don't?

There could be a problem with ELF support in Etherboot 5.4, or possibly 
a problem between mknbi and Etherboot.  Mknbi puts a piece of code in 
the nbi image, and this code must be compatible with the version of 
Etherboot that is loading it (and vice-versa).

For something mildly perverse, I wonder if you could do something like 
using mknbi-linux to turn a memtest.bin file into an nbi kernel image, 
and then try booting that with Etherboot, rather than the elf image.

Until we get things sorted out, I hope that PXELINUX and MEMDISK will 
be of help to you.  Since Etherboot 5.4 can load PXELINUX, perhaps 
instead of using mknbi to wrap images, you can use MEMDISK to load 
them, and the menu feature of SYSLINUX to do the menu.

> Thanks for your time and effort! Keep up the good work and I'll report 
> back with my PXELINUX efforts...
>   -Sam

You're very welcome.  I wish I could debug this more deeply for you.  
We lost some core developers recently, so we're all coming up to speed 
on parts of the code we aren't as familiar with.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing about your adventures with 
PXELINUX/MEMDISK, and if you feel like putting something about your 
setup on wiki.etherboot.org, we'd appreciate it.  I'd be interested in 
knowing how you have things working.

Thanks,

Marty



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