Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[ron minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, andrey mirtchovski wrote:

> 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.

ah, etherboot. such pain.

you wanna go gross? you can do this:

- boot linux
- have linux kexec the plan9 loader, after we convert it into an elfimage

ah, the horror, linux is now a plan9 loader bootstrap. What do you think?

It would work. Or we convert the plan9 kernel to an elfimage, pass it to
linux, and let linux boot plan9. That will work too.

> 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.

actually 9load is an elfimage, not masked as a linux kernel image. Subtle
but important difference: you can conceivably generate elfimages on your
plan9 box, but linux kernel images? the horror.

andrey, you can get 1 GHZ M-EPIA cards for $100, run linuxbios, put 9load
in flash, and forget etherboot.

Why not do that?

ron