Re: Etherboot 5.5

On May 19, 2005, at 1:40 PM, Michael Brown wrote:
> Etherboot 5.5 is now open in CVS.  This represents the early stages of 
> a
> significant restructuring and improvement of the Etherboot codebase.

Outstanding!

I did not write sooner because I did not have words to express how 
wonderful this is.

Thank you so much for your work, Michael!

The possibilities that this major restructuring opens up are enormous.

The next LinuxWorld Expo is August 8, 2005 in San Francisco.  That's 10 
weeks from now.

Until then, I plan to spend every moment I can working on Etherboot.  
The opportunity to get a Free, production quality, PXE compatible 
network bootloader working is far too good to pass up.

But, what's more important is that we are the people who can actually 
make this happen.

Michael's coding is spectacular, but what I find more exciting is that 
he is committed to helping people like myself who want to fully 
understand what he has done, and thereby be able to support and extend 
the code!

For people who like to make things, working with a skilled maker is a 
high privilege.  Working with a maker who is generous enough to help 
you get better is about as good as it gets.

HPA has also been extremely generous in giving valuable advice and 
guidance.  As the author of PXELINUX, he has a deep understanding of 
many of the things we are attempting to accomplish, and his thoughts 
have been of great benefit.

I know others will come and hack with us.  The discussions will, I'm 
sure, be spirited and enlightening, and we get to make something that 
really matters!

So hang on to your hats.  This mailing list is likely to get pretty 
busy for the next 10 weeks at least.  Some may want to switch their 
subscription to digest-mode if the number of messages gets too high.  
Others may want to update filters to keep their inboxes from being 
overrun.

> Of course, none of this comes for free.  The following features are
> currently broken:
> - All architectures except for i386.  If anyone wants to donate ia64,
>   armnommu, or e1 hardware to me, then I can do something about this
>   myself.
> - The decompressor (and, therefore, compressed images).
> - Any prefix other than .dsk.
> - Any device that isn't a NIC.
> - The UNDI driver.
> - The PXE stack.
> - All image formats except .nbi.

Excellent!

He is an opportunity to fix things and understand how things really 
work.  I live for this!
Bring it on!

(also, rom-o-matic.net will need significant changes to work with 5.5's 
new build system, which is a good excuse to add features I've wanted to 
add)

> To forestall the inevitable questions: yes, it was worth breaking all
> this.  The internal architecture of Etherboot had become far too
> convoluted, and was in dire need of being torn apart and reassembled.

I agree.  And even beyond the need for a coding, we need to get more 
people understanding how this stuff works, through documentation, 
discussion, and testing.  Bare metal network booting is an interesting, 
exciting, and very rewarding place to be, especially when you've got 
good people working with you.

So...

Whether you document, test, hack, or just have some ideas about how we 
could do something better, your ideas are welcome.

Let's do something excellent together!

Marty

-- 
     Try: http://rom-o-matic.net/ to make Etherboot images instantly.

    Name: Marty Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827;
          Cambridge, MA 02139; USA
   Voice: (617) 491-6935; Fax: (617) 491-7046
   Email: [email protected]
     Web: http://www.etherboot.org/



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