Re: PXEgrub development on grub2

[Michal Suchanek <hramrach@centrum.cz>]

2009/9/11 Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com>:
> Hi,
>
> Quoting Robert Millan, who wrote the following on Fri, 11 Sep 2009:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 02:17:56PM -0700, Seth Goldberg wrote:
>>>
>>>>> It sounds good. Looks like gPXE should work on EFI.
>>>>>
>>>>> I will try to build an image.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Though that doestn't change that pxe.mod is currently only build for
>>>> i386-pc and nothing else
>>>
>>>  Does anyone have any patches that enable PXE on EFI-firmware-based
>>> systems?
>>
>> What we need is firmware-independant support.  I can live with the
>> PXE-on-BIOS
>> hack if it's useful, but what we're supposed to have is a driver framework
>> like
>> the one in GRUB Legacy, not a stub for each firmware type.
>>
>> Reliing on firmware is problematic, because it's usually proprietary and
>> buggy,
>> we shouldn't do it if it can be avoided.
>
>
>  I strongly disagree with you in this specific case.  Our experience in
> Solaris has demonstrated that PXE firmware is surprisingly robust (when the
> right combination of API calls (i.e. those tested by Windows) are used).  We
> have been successfully using PXE-based firmware for netbooting for many
> years now, and we would like to continue to do so.  Maintaining a driver
> collection for NICs is futile, IMHO.  Using the firmware that's there, and
> that's reliable should be the goal.  Not all firmware is our enemy :).

Real hardware drivers should provide much better functionality than
PXE (other firmwares may do better, though).

Still using PXE and other firmware as the networking driver allows
driving huge class of devices in the same way (although perhaps not
optimally). Also there will be likely devices that have firmware
drivers but not gPXE/Linux/... drivers.

Thanks

Michal