> In the case of PXELINUX, the PXE loader is the called pxelinux.bin.
> Pxelinux.bin reads the default.cfg file to determine the ltsp kernel
> to download. If you find the PXELINUX approach too complicated then
> try the PXE-Etherboot approach.
Complication is, of course, highly subjective. :) PXELINUX fans would
claim that chaining Etherboot is "complicated" and may be offended by
the idea that PXELINUX may not suit everyone. The LTSP nbi images have
been referred to as "polluted" on the syslinux list. :)
As Larry Wall would say, "there's more than one way to do it" - which is
easier usually comes down to what you are used to.
> The PXE-Etherboot method is quite ingenuious. In a nutshell, the nbp
> code forces your PXE boot ROM to function like a normal Etherboot
> boot ROM or floppy.
[ Getting dangerously OT, any further discussion should go to an
etherboot list ]
Just in case in anyone gets the wrong idea, Etherboot's current PXE
"support" is pretty basic. It simply unloads as much of PXE as it can,
then runs as a normal Etherboot image, so not particularly "ingenious"
(I can say that, being one of the originators, though my colleague
Vasil Vasilev wrote most of the code). Etherboot does not currently
use any PXE code, though it could: using the PXE UNDI driver would
make a single Etherboot image portable to any PXE NIC. There's a hook
to leave UNDI loaded; anyone feel like porting Etherboot to use it?
Other than UNDI, there's no benefit to using other PXE code: most PXE
tftp code is notoriously buggy; PXE MTFTP is nonstandard (and most
people won't need it anyway).
An interesting possibility is implementing open source PXE on top of
Etherboot. NILO is an open source PXE implementation which runs on
OSkit rather than Etherboot, and someone has done a minimal subset of
PXE code on top of Etherboot for booting FreeBSD; as many people would
like open source PXE, something will happen before long. One could
have a rom with both PXE and Etherboot "personalities" sharing nic
driver and dhcp/tftp code. Some commercial NIC roms are double-headed,
e.g. 3Com 905C does PXE or 3Com's code.
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