[ipxe-devel] Image Load is gone?

[Duane Voth]

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Michael Brown <mbrown at fensystems.co.uk>wrote:

> On Thursday 02 May 2013 23:14:47 Duane Voth wrote:
> > I am right in expecting the snponly ipxe to work nicely with existing
> > network devices right?  Or perhaps this usage impacts the question above?
>
> Quite possibly not.  EFI doesn't have a clean model for multiple users of
> an
> SNP interface.
>

ooo.  that's a deal breaker for me.  (nested shells/interpreters with
embedded socket libraries will try to use the same device
"pseudo-simultaneously")

> Last, at what point does snp ipxe plug into the uEFI stack?  Is the ipxe
> > dhcp config separate from the EFI dhcp client?  (I have noticed two
> > different IP addresses being allocated for this same NIC/MAC)
>
> iPXE's TCP/IP stack is entirely separate from the EFI TCP/IP stack.  EFI
> knows
> nothing about addresses obtained using DHCP inside iPXE.
>

Ok, so the "plugin" point is the hardware itself (or in my recent case the
qemu hardware emulation).  And when I run them both (ipxe for boot then
edk2 apps) they contention for the hardware... does ipxe continue to use
the NIC after it chains a shell?


> Could ipxe use more of the existing protocols now that edk2 is more
> stable?
>
> It could, but it's not going to.  iPXE is going to deliberately avoid the
> EDK2
> facilities and limitations.  See http://ipxe.org/efi/vision for the
> reason why.
>

Ok good, I applaud this approach, and expect ipxe will likely become the
new defacto standard.  And I now realize I asked the question backward.
(also based on Laszlo's recent thread in the edk2-devel form)  ipxe appears
to provide an Managed Network Protocol which should (hopefully will, maybe
does now already) provide a "NIC" for the edk2 stack?
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