[ipxe-devel] any details about the state of KEEP_IT_REAL?

Klaus Espenlaub klaus.espenlaub at oracle.com
Tue Jun 12 12:57:57 UTC 2012


On 12.06.2012 10:26, Robin Smidsrød wrote:
> On 11.06.2012 19:40, Klaus Espenlaub wrote:
>> So if iPXE wants to replace both Etherboot (which is also broken in this
>> respect) and Intel PXE in VirtualBox this apparently otherwise unused
>> feature will have to be resurrected. We're aware that this means kicking
>> out any feature which isn't vital, and that's not a concern since in the
>> worst case the people who need a more feature rich iPXE build can
>> replace the ROM image, or use the simple one to bootstrap a build over
>> the network which has everything enabled.
>
> I was actually trying to replace the ROM image in VirtualBox (Windows 7
> x64 host), but I've not been successful with the paravirtualized or
> intel-emulated adapters. Only the AMD pcnet network adapter seems to
> work with an iPXE ROM. That is kinda boring, since I want an emulated
> gigabit adapter, and not just 100Mbit.

What we're working on is a single ROM which supports all relevant cards, 
and this appears to work well. Selecting the right options is a bit 
tricky. We already integrated the (vbox specific) code to control the 
network card boot order.

So far we don't have it in our public repository, as there are Oracle 
processes for using any 3rd party software. Once they're through we'll 
of course make our adaptions public.

Note that the KEEP_IT_REAL support is only one aspect, and it won't stop 
us from including iPXE as soon as we're reasonably certain that the ROM 
works better than Etherboot.

Klaus


> This is my tiny bash function I use to build the vbox-related artifacts:
>
> make_vbox() {
>      cd src&&
>      make -j4 bin/intel--virtio-net--pcnet32.dsk&&
>      make -j4 bin/10222000.rom bin/1af41000.rom bin/8086100e.rom&&
>      perl util/padimg.pl --verbose --blksize 4096 bin/10222000.rom&&
>      perl util/padimg.pl --verbose --blksize 4096 bin/1af41000.rom&&
>      perl util/padimg.pl --verbose --blksize 4096 bin/8086100e.rom&&
>      cd ..
> }
>
> It's the 1022:2000 ROM that seems to work for me, the two others don't
> even load.
>
> -- Robin
> _______________________________________________
> ipxe-devel mailing list
> ipxe-devel at lists.ipxe.org
> https://lists.ipxe.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/ipxe-devel


-- 
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Dr. Klaus Espenlaub | Snr. Manager Software Development Desktop
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