Bug#607417: win32-loader: please offer a Boot from network with gPXE option

[Didier 'OdyX' Raboud]

block 607417 by 474034
thanks

Hi Alkis, and thanks for your bugreport, 

 We've modified it a bit so that it adds a Boot from network entry in
 the Windows boot loader, instead of loading a Linux kernel.
 To accomplish this we statically linked gpxe.lkrn [1] to
 win32-loader.exe, and we modified main.nsi to load this instead of
 vmlinuz. No initrd was necessary.

Nice.

 Currently the resulting ltsp-loader.exe [2] is used in some thousand
 Greek school PCs to netboot thin and fat clients. But many others have
 asked for this functionality in the #ltsp irc channel and in the
 ltsp-discuss mailing list, so we think it'd be much better if the
 upstream win32-loader Makefile supported a Boot from network with gPXE
 target.
 
 Unfortunately gPXE is not yet in Debian due to (afaik) some unresolved
 licensing issues. However if the win32-loader Makefile supported a gPXE
 target, maybe one of the following would be possible:
  * The gPXE devs to compile win32-loader with the gPXE target, and to
host the resulting win32-loader-gpxe.exe on their site themselves.
  * Or a sysadmin or user could do that for his own use.
  * Or win32-loader.exe could dynamically download gpxe.lkrn from the
gPXE website.

As gPXE is not in Debian, I don't think it would be correct to upload a 
win32-loader including said functionality in Debian right now (in particular 
not in these times of freeze). Hence I marked that bug blocked by the gPXE 
ITP.

But more generally, I don't see a reason to keep your patch out: merging is 
always good.

 If you want we can send you the .diff for main.nsi that we currently
 have, but we aren't very skilled with NSIS scripting so if you decide to
 add that functionality upstream you'd probably want to properly
 reimplement this yourselves. :)

Please do so; attach the patch to this bugreport so that we can take a look 
at it.

 In any case thanks again,
 Alkis Georgopoulos

Thanks also go to you for making such a nice use of win32-loader. :-

Cheers, OdyX

-- 
Didier Raboud, proud Debian Maintainer (DM).
CH-1020 Renens
did...@raboud.com


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Bug#607417: win32-loader: please offer a Boot from network with gPXE option

[Christian PERRIER]

Package: win32-loader
Severity: wishlist
X=Debbugs-CC: Alkis Georgopoulos alk...@gmail.com

First of all thank you for your wonderful win32-loader.

We've modified it a bit so that it adds a Boot from network entry in
the Windows boot loader, instead of loading a Linux kernel.
To accomplish this we statically linked gpxe.lkrn [1] to
win32-loader.exe, and we modified main.nsi to load this instead of
vmlinuz. No initrd was necessary.

Currently the resulting ltsp-loader.exe [2] is used in some thousand
Greek school PCs to netboot thin and fat clients. But many others have
asked for this functionality in the #ltsp irc channel and in the
ltsp-discuss mailing list, so we think it'd be much better if the
upstream win32-loader Makefile supported a Boot from network with gPXE
target.

Unfortunately gPXE is not yet in Debian due to (afaik) some unresolved
licensing issues. However if the win32-loader Makefile supported a gPXE
target, maybe one of the following would be possible:
 * The gPXE devs to compile win32-loader with the gPXE target, and to
   host the resulting win32-loader-gpxe.exe on their site themselves.
 * Or a sysadmin or user could do that for his own use.
 * Or win32-loader.exe could dynamically download gpxe.lkrn from the
   gPXE website.

If you want we can send you the .diff for main.nsi that we currently
have, but we aren't very skilled with NSIS scripting so if you decide to
add that functionality upstream you'd probably want to properly
reimplement this yourselves. :)

In any case thanks again,
Alkis Georgopoulos

[1]: http://www.etherboot.org/
[2]: 
http://users.sch.gr/alkisg/tosteki/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2136.0;attach=1941



-- 




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