[ipxe-devel] some DOS related questions.

[Bernd Blaauw]

Dear iPXE developers,

I've noticed the SANBOOT example for booting FreeDOS 1.0 on your 
project's website (mailing list archives). The default ipxe.iso worked 
fine for this, provided I used two commands:
* dhcp
* sanboot --drive 0x81 http://boot.ipxe.org/freedos/fdfullcd.iso

if I omit the 0x81 part I'm out of luck because neither harddisk nor ISO 
are found then (mapping to 0x80 isn't that great apparently).
If I add it, the ELTORITO.SYS  ISO9960 driver seems to be able to 
succesfully 'mount' the ISO.

I've got some questions and suggestions though:
1) Where can I find documentation about which NICs are supported? Maybe
GPXE project lists them, your website at least doesn't seem to do so. I 
guess each and every one of them is included in the default compiled 
testing IPXE.ISO file, together with some kind of PCI detection.

2) How do I keep the connection to the internet open and which packet 
driver can I use? Is it still NIC-dependant or is there a driver that 
attaches to iPXE? I'm not aware of an UNDIPKT.COM or anything

3) Is the Flashrom project suitable for your NIC flashing? 
http://www.flashrom.org for more info.

4) Is there some option to load this SANBOOT'd ISO into RAM?
basically Syslinux's memdisk I guess, but then as:
[ memsanbt http://server.domain.extension/path/filename.iso ]
 From FreeDOS itself this would be easy enough, just wondering if it's 
possible to do so in advance from iPXE itself. Or I could just use the 
double ISO trick (Isolinux shell/menu wrapped around inner ISO which can 
be booted using memdisk)


I've got a FreeDOS 1.1 test release available at [ 
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.1-test3/fd11tst3.iso 
] (16MB). No sources atm though, but neither does your ISO :)

Linking to that FDOS 1.1 ISO through SANBOOT directive is no use, as the 
HTTP part redirects to [ftp://ftp.ibliblio.org/] (something that modern 
browsers and WGET/CURL might pick up, but other stuff like HTGET nor 
your SANBOOT directive seem to be able to.).

with best regards,

Bernd Blaauw