[ipxe-devel] select a specific interface during initialization?

[Michael Brown]

On 16/09/14 11:25, Andy Medynets wrote:
>>> our  board  has multiple network chips: 6 x Intel 82574L and 1 x Intel
>>> EG20T  pce-gbe(8086:8817,  currently not supported). Due to this, ipxe
>>> spends enormously long time probing and initializing available network
>>> interfaces,  which is not needed. Only one dedicated network interface
>>> will be used for booting.
>>> Is   there   a  way  to  [pre]select  a  single  network interface for
>>> initialization and further use?
>>> We're still trying to avoid patching the source code.
> GC> Use your own custom embedded script.
> GC> http://ipxe.org/scripting
> GC> http://ipxe.org/cmd
> GC> http://ipxe.org/cfg/busloc
> GC> --Gene
>
> My   understanding   that  any  scripts  get  interpreted  _after_ the
> initialization/device_probing, which takes a long time. Please correct
> me if I'm wrong.

Scripts get interpreted after device enumeration, but that should never 
take a noticeable amount of time.  (Device enumeration merely 
established that the hardware is present and resets the NIC to a known 
state; it doesn't open the network interface, send/receive packets, 
perform DHCP, etc).

If device enumeration is really taking a long time, please try building 
with DEBUG=intel to find out what is causing the delay.

Michael