Re: PXEgrub development on grub2

[Seth Goldberg]

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 :).

 --S