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

Marty Connor wrote:

> 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.
>
No, we shouldn't need mknbi for etherbooting memtest86(v3.2). The binary 
file named 'memtest' we get (along with memtest.bin) when building 
memtest86 (from the source tarball) is already a valid nbi for both 
eb5.2.4 and eb5.4.0 (the two eb versions I've tried). If the nfl menu is 
not that important for Sam who seemed not that comfortable with 
pxelinux, he could simply do this:

etherboot (5.2.x or 5.4.0) -> memtest

I believe it is an nfl-related issue more than anything else. In fact, 
it (mk{nbi,elf}-nfl) never worked (for me at least) since eb5.3.x. 
That's  why I'm still stuck with 5.2.4 today (which is more than enough 
for me :). Unfortunately, I don't know enough about bootloaders to be 
able to fix it. The only thing I noticed about memtest86 is that its 
'load' and 'start' address look very different from that of a regular 
linux kernel. Here's what I got by doing a `disnbi memtest`:

Type: ELF
Start address:          00010000
Flags:
 
Segment number 0
Load address:           00010000
Image length:           91796
Memory length:          91796

Could nfl be doing something bad there?
isac


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