Re: Development directions (AoE)
Marty Connor <[email protected]> Wed, 28 Dec 2005 06:00:52 -0500
| Newsgroups | gmane.network.etherboot.devel,gmane.network.etherboot.user |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On Dec 22, 2005, at 6:09 PM, James Harper wrote:
> I'm (slowly) working on AoE (ATA over Ethernet) support, using
> Etherboot
> as a base.
Neat. I hope it's something we can integrate into Etherboot.
> The idea is that when the rom executes first, it gives a 'hit ctrl-a
> (?)
> for setup' message and if the key combination is hit, enters into a
> setup screen. Assuming that it is set to be active, it installs the
> int19 handler and returns control to the O/S. (PnP obviously behaves a
> bit differently but same sort of thing)
The 3C905x with a LanWorks boot ROM does something like this (I think
it's a different key combination).
I think they must save some information to the Flash EEPROM BOOTROM,
unless they are actually writing to the tiny serial EEPROM on card.
Does anyone know for sure? Not all cards have this, and some (the
Intel EEPRO100 comes to mind) might need extra help to do this.
> The int19 handler then probes drives and assuming a drive is found for
> this machine, installs an int13 handler and then boots.
Sounds plausible.
> At the moment I'm stuck in that when the rom vector is called, I
> want to
> call 32 bit code to run the setup etc (setup will need to be able to
> probe drives etc so it needs to pretty much have the whole show
> running). This much works, but I can't get it to return properly to
> the
> operating system... things hang at this point :(
Michael Brown is head hacker, and he's distracted by other work right
now. There are probably other folks on the list who can answer the
question better than I can.
Michael highly recommends the use of Bochs, and Open Source x86
emulator which he has used extensively for the development of
Etherboot. I have also used it, and it is impressive.
It might make it easier for your to develop and test things. The
hardest part is getting it set up, since you have to do some
networking magic to get the routing right, since it's a virtual
machine. I'm sure we can help you with that, though.
> A previous incantation was more or less working but was extremely
> hardcoded (no setup screen etc) and completely butchered Etherboot
> in a
> way that made a compile time option (eg make -DAOE_BOOT ne.zrom) an
> impossibility. It did almost boot linux though.
I'd like to see this work, and will help where I can. I'm not as
skilled in the low-level interface as some, but I want to learn, and
am getting better in my understanding of it. It's only a matter of
time.
> If anyone is intimate with the whole 16 bit / 32 bit thing and
> might be
> able to offer some assistance with the bug I'm having, I'd love to
> hear
> from you!!!
We're gearing up for some serious Etherboot hacking in the next few
months, so I hope you (and anyone else interested) will stick around.
It's a funny analogy, but Open Source hacking is a little like
surfing. We wait for a wave, and we come out and ride it as long as
we can.
Right now, there are a number of us gearing up to hack. We all have
day jobs, and have to honor our other obligations, but it's great
when we can work together on something that brings us joy and the
satisfaction of doing. I live for these times, and I work and save
for them too.
> <offtopic> Once I have an AoE int13 driver, which will be enough to
> boot
> DOS and bootstrap any O/S with a native AoE driver,
I'm wondering if you could use Etherboot to boot PXELINUX, which
would load MEMDISK (a DOS disk emulator), which would then load a DOS
AoE driver? You might want to check out:
http://wiki.etherboot.org/pmwiki.php/Main/BootingMemdisk
I think you can ignore all the mknbi stuff. I you just want to get
PXELINUX up and running, and let it load your floppy image.
> I might take a deep
> breath and have a crack at a Windows driver (the Linux driver already
> exists and is more than stable). There is a windows driver in the
> pipeline, but I've had a look at a beta and it seems to come with a
> huge
> amount of overhead, and is almost certainly proprietry. I'm sure it
> will
> work great and probably perform a lot better than anything I can
> come up
> with, but I don't think is something that could be used as the second
> stage windows bootloader. </offtopic>
Hopefully you'll have so much fun hacking Etherboot that you'll
forget such thoughts ;-)
I find hacking closed-source stuff to be much less interesting than
in the old days. It's neat to figure out what's going on inside the
box and interface with it, but it often seems a hollow victory, since
I am often operating one step removed from definitive information.
> Thanks
> James
And thank you for your message. I hope you keep going. The next
wave will be coming, and I hope you're riding it with us.
Marty
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:etherboot-
>> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Marty Connor
>> Sent: Friday, 23 December 2005 09:17
>> To: Etherboot Developers List
>> Cc: Etherboot Users List
>> Subject: [Etherboot-developers] Development directions
>>
>> Holiday Greetings to everyone!
>>
>> As it looks like I will finally have more time to actively work on
>> Etherboot again, I thought I'd write down some thoughts, and invite
>> conversation. All ideas are welcome, so feel free to speak up.
>>
>> One of the most satisfying things about programming (or really any
>> collaborative activity) is talking to people who are interested in
>> it. I've been programming for over 30 years now, and it is still
>> fun.
>>
>> So, I've been thinking quite a lot of late about what we can do to
>> make Etherboot better.
>> It's a hard question, because it immediately brings to mind the
>> questions:
>>
>> better for who?
>> better in what ways?
>>
>> For me, making Etherboot useful to people is important. Most of the
>> things I've added to Etherboot have been because I felt they would
>> allow it to be useful to more people.
>>
>> At this point, however, I'm taking a hard look at Etherboot, and
>> thinking that I'd like to strip out some of the things that have been
>> added over the years. Just as Mozilla spawned Firefox and
>> Thunderbird, I'd like to create GPXE from Etherboot.
>>
>> Basically, what I have in mind is to create a new module called gpxe,
>> and take Etherboot 5.4, and using it as a base, strip out things that
>> don't work, or aren't supported, or that no longer make sense for a
>> PXE-centric bootloader.
>>
>> 5.4 will continue to be actively maintained, of course, and there
>> have been some really nice contributions lately. One reason to
>> create another module is because it's really hard to change Etherboot
>> without disrupting people who depend on one feature or another.
>>
>> Speaking of development, Michael Brown is going to be continuing work
>> on 5.5 in the not-too-distant future, which has a lot of nice
>> improvements and simplifications, and now seems like a good time to
>> work on gpxe. Having Michael actively back in the development mix
>> will be great, as he knows the internals of Etherboot better than
>> anyone at present.
>>
>> I'd also like to find out who else is interested in actively
>> programming on Etherboot / GPXE. Most of our programming is done by
>> a few people, and that's probably always going to be the case, just
>> because it's a rather specialized kind of work. But I also think
>> that there might be some people who would like to learn, and if there
>> are, please let me know, or just join in the discussion. Programming
>> bare-metal and close to the machine can be a lot of fun, and is very
>> educational. I hope if you have an interest, you'll join this
>> conversation.
>>
>> Another thing that comes to mind is whether the separation between
>> Etherboot-Developers and Etherboot-Users still makes sense. Given
>> rom-o-matic.net, I wonder if we should just have Etherboot-Discuss
>> for people interested in keeping up with the project, and Etherboot-
>> Announce for people who just want to know about new releases.
>> Etherboot-Developers has over 100 people on it, but only a handful
>> actively developing.
>>
>> So that's what's on my mind. What's on yours?
>>
>> Let's get some conversation going, and see where it leads.
>>
>> Warmest Greetings of the Season to all,
>>
>> 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/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through
>> log
>> files
>> for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
>> searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD
> SPLUNK!
>> http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click
>> _______________________________________________
>> Etherboot-developers mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/etherboot-developers
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through
> log files
> for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
> searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD
> SPLUNK!
> http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv37&alloc_id865&op=click
> _______________________________________________
> Etherboot-developers mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/etherboot-developers
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files
for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK!
http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv37&alloc_id865&op=click