[ipxe-devel] "Pre-embedding" a kernel within ipxe.pxe?

[Joshua Oreman]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 11:19 PM, Matthew Helton <mwhelton at gmail.com> wrote:
> The stray thought occured to me that instead of scripting
> whitelists/blacklists by system model, or relying on external detection
> methods (Syslinux or HDT) for NICs, could be ipxe.pxe be altered to carry an
> alternate kernel within itself?
>
> The concept would be that as part of the ipxe.pxe binary; it already has
> undionly.kpxe embedded within it.
>
> That way, if we do a simple check to see if the native iPXE can detect a
> NIC, and if it fails we have a way to back out of it.
>
> Example:
>
> isset ${net0/mac:hexhyp} && goto next || boot undionly.kpxe
>
> Am I insane?

Sure, you can embed undionly.kpxe in ipxe.pxe in the same way you'd
embed a script - but ipxe.pxe already includes all drivers including
the UNDI driver. While I haven't tested it, I believe you should be
able to build ipxe.kpxe and have it automatically use a native driver
if one is available, an UNDI driver if not.

Josh

>
> Matt
> --
> There is never time enough to do it right, but there always seems to be
> enough time to do it again.
>
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