[ipxe-devel] [1c838002] memtest86+.bin vs. memtest86.bin?

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Michael Brown writes:
>>>>> On Thursday 16 Aug 2012 21:46:05 Ivan Shmakov wrote:

 >> (They're both run under QEMU/KVM; virtio-net.lkrn.  Git revision:
 >> 1170a36e6bb8.)

 >> AIUI, the header of memtest86+.bin somehow fails to meet the
 >> multiboot.c criteria, but I don't quite understand those.  Also a
 >> bit suspicious is that memtest86+_multiboot.bin fails with the same
 >> error, for which multiboot_load_raw () is listed as the only source.

 >> Any suggestions?

 > I would suggest using the PXE NBP version of memtest: memtest.0.
 > This isn't merged upstream yet, but you can get the source from

 >   http://git.ipxe.org/people/mcb30/memtest.git/shortlog/refs/heads/pxe

 > or a prebuilt binary version from

 >   http://boot.ipxe.org/memtest.0

 > The advantage of using memtest.0 is that you can exit back to iPXE
 > without rebooting,

	This didn't work for me — hitting ESC in memtest86+.0
	(f9d3679f3770, running under QEMU/KVM) results in:

Could not boot: Error 0x00000002 (http://ipxe.org/00000002)
Could not boot image: Error 0x00000002 (http://ipxe.org/00000002)
No more network devices

	A few lines later (presumably coming from QEMU or SeaBIOS) the
	system freezes.

 > and the exit status will reflect whether or not the test was
 > successful.  You can also specify a maximum number of passes after
 > which the test will automatically exit.  For example:

 >   chain http://boot.ipxe.org/memtest.0 passes=1 && goto passed || goto failed

	ACK, thanks.

	Do I understand it correctly that ‘chain’ implements some part
	of the PXE protocol that allows it to pass “command line” to the
	image loaded?

	While Memtest86+/PXE binary is a worthwhile addition, I'm still
	interested in what exactly are the iPXE criteria the “stock”
	Memtest86+ binary fails to meet?  I'd like to try iPXE to
	bootstrap other systems (such as FreeBSD), and it'd probably
	save me some time if I'd know where to look should it fail.

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