From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 20:49:52 +0200 From: Sergey Reva Message-ID: <19422771343.20041129204952@mail.ru> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] pxe - nvram In-Reply-To: <44f8762171a1cdd3d41a31d12ba099de@quintile.net> References: <44f8762171a1cdd3d41a31d12ba099de@quintile.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0ebeb4f2-eace-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Hello all, Monday, November 29, 2004, 8:13:47 PM, Steve wrote: SS> I really like PXE boot as it needs no disks of any kind, SS> not even an IDE flash card. I hoped there might be somwhere I could SS> put my auth ID and key so I could boot CPU servers the same way SS> but I cannot see how - I have to use a disk of some sort. SS> I was vaguely hoping somone might know a standardised free area SS> PXE flash on ether cards or maybe know how to hide 64 odd bytes SS> of data in the CMOS nvram on x86 PCs. Most of modern chipsets have about 256 (plus CMOS in clock) extra bytes of nonvolatile ram, some part used by BIOS Setup, but some it still free. It need to be checked, I somewhere heard this. SS> The only idea I came up with is a allowing secstore to serve SS> up files without a password for given MAC address and auth ID pairs, SS> but then again MACs are no longer fixed-in-the-die in modern cards SS> so I am suspectable to spoofing. SS> Anyway the general answer appears to be "no" for x86 PCs. How about little external FlashROM (24cXX) on LPT (or COM) port through i2c bus. It's more easy and most standardised. Sergey -- http://rs-rlab.narod.ru mailto:rs_rlab@mail.ru