From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: andrey mirtchovski To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] PXE boot? In-Reply-To: <81bb64a172526c2b471d6db3e451dd44@plan9.bell-labs.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 13:20:06 -0600 Topicbox-Message-UUID: be3c08ec-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Fri, 30 May 2003, David Presotto wrote: > The 32k limitation doesn't seem to be true. The limitiation is architecture > dependent and the PC seems to have chosen infinite, though there is a > practical limit of (640-28)K because of where things get loaded. I've > got 9load saying hello but it crashes when it jumps to 32 bit mode. > My forehead is getting bloodier by the minute. > i'm there too. i gave up though -- etherboot won't recognize the gigabit ethernet card on this box, so i'm waiting until i get a card etherboot can use. another suggestion: why not do a three-stage boot? the dhcp configuration for etherboot (linux dhcp, though, not sure if supported in plan9) has this interesting option: if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient" { filename "/tftpboot/etherboot"; } else { filename "/tftpboot/9load"; } the first time it loads the etherboot kernel, which then repeats the same operation, but is this time given a 9load, which is masked as a linux kernel image (this is what Ron uses to boot the small solid-state cluster). then 9load could proceed loading any way it likes (still no plan9.ini at this point, though). this way there is no restriction on the size of the 9load image. I can't test this right now, unfortunately. andrey ps: i'm aiming for an even better setup -- PXE downloads etherboot through the gige card, etherboot downloads 9load through a 100baseT rtl card i've stuck in the machine just for that purpose, 9load does something else that i haven't decided upon yet.