Re: status of grub netboot in GRUB2

[John Lumby]

Thanks for the numerous replies.    Some comments interspersed and one question 
at the end.

Lennart Sorensen wrote:

|  What is the point of having a bootloader that needs to sit on a disk on
|  a box, when then network boots?  With PXE and the like you don't need
|  any disk and means you are really net booting.

There are various situations where PXE is not an answer.   Examples -
   no PXE in the NIC
   The system BIOS can't or won't communicate with my tftp network server -
         e.g. maybe this is an Apple IMac which refuses to tftp to my server
   and other posters mentioned other reasons.
Basically,   I am hoping for what GRUB1 offered -
fetch a linux kernel over the network using tftp under control of GRUB.

Ian Turner wrote:
|  But I suspect you can boot GRUB from physical media
|  and then still activate the PXE module afterwards.
    ...
|  Netboot works in grub2, but only using the PXE protocol. 

Very interesting  -  but how?   see my question below.

Vladimir Serbinenko wrote:
|  Manoelo Abranches is working on this feature:
|  http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/grub/people/mrabran/grub_net/

I looked and don't see any content anywhere under that page
or the neighbouring http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/grub/people/phcoder/net/.bzr/

Lennart Sorensen wrote:

|  Well a neat program for booting over the internet would be gPXE:
|  http://boot.kernel.org/

Yes and no.   It can fetch a kernel over the network,  but it's not GRUB!
   -  when run in boot program mode, can't be embedded on hard disk (I think),
      has to reside on floppy or CDRom
   -  I think this mode of use was never its primary intention -  it's designed 
to be
      burned into a eeprom and operate automatically  - hence ...
   -  ... really ugly user interface as compared to GRUB
          (no command recall, useless help, no completion, etc)
   -  strange and apparently sometimes unsuccessful method for building a 
version with support
      for my NIC  -  I have to go to some site and "order" it,   rather than 
configure / make etc.

Question:   is the current (1.98) netboot/PXE functionality documented 
somewhere?
I did try reading the 1.98 info but the node for "Network" is empty -
and it seems nothing there in the .texi.   Sorry if this is all covered back in 
the archives
but I don't see it or it's out of date.

John