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

[Robin Smidsrød]

On 23.12.2012 08:28, Joshua Oreman wrote:
> 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.

I always thought that ipxe.kpxe was the particular build that exhibited
that behavior, but I have still not gotten it confirmed by anyone else.
And considering all my hardware has natively supported iPXE drivers, it
is a bit hard for me to verify.

-- Robin