Feature request: network devices

Feature request: network devices

[mardok45]

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I'm attempting to load Grub2 off a DHCP server with Macintosh's (PowerPC)
Netboot.

I am able to boot Grub2, but it gives me the following errors:

error: no such disk
Unsupported type network for device last-boot
Unsupported type network for device last-boot
error: no such disk

I'd like to make a feature request to have network device drivers.  It'd be
nice to be able to boot off the network and be prompted with a menu that
allows you to boot into one of several different Linux environment contained
on a server.  Maintenance and imaging are the main things I want to use this
for.

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Re: Feature request: network devices

[Vasily Averin]

mardok45 wrote:
> I'm attempting to load Grub2 off a DHCP server with Macintosh's
> (PowerPC) Netboot.
> 
> I am able to boot Grub2, but it gives me the following errors:
> 
> error: no such disk
> Unsupported type network for device last-boot
> Unsupported type network for device last-boot
> error: no such disk

I've used grub from bean's git repository and lightly patched it to add memdisk
module for efi.
Then I've created grub.efi binary with embed grub.cfg and embed disk with kernel
image.

> I'd like to make a feature request to have network device drivers.  It'd
> be nice to be able to boot off the network and be prompted with a menu
> that allows you to boot into one of several different Linux environment
> contained on a server.  Maintenance and imaging are the main things I
> want to use this for.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel

Re: Feature request: network devices

[mardok45]

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Are you talking about Grub legacy?  I would like to use Grub2 just for the
sake of being up-to-date.

What needs to be added to Grub2 to be able to boot via TFTP?  I can't make
any promises, but I would like to see if I can add the features myself as a
side project (when I'm not busy with school).

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Vasily Averin <vvs@parallels.com> wrote:

> mardok45 wrote:
> > I'm attempting to load Grub2 off a DHCP server with Macintosh's
> > (PowerPC) Netboot.
> >
> > I am able to boot Grub2, but it gives me the following errors:
> >
> > error: no such disk
> > Unsupported type network for device last-boot
> > Unsupported type network for device last-boot
> > error: no such disk
>
> I've used grub from bean's git repository and lightly patched it to add
> memdisk
> module for efi.
> Then I've created grub.efi binary with embed grub.cfg and embed disk with
> kernel
> image.
>
> > I'd like to make a feature request to have network device drivers.  It'd
> > be nice to be able to boot off the network and be prompted with a menu
> > that allows you to boot into one of several different Linux environment
> > contained on a server.  Maintenance and imaging are the main things I
> > want to use this for.
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Grub-devel mailing list
> > Grub-devel@gnu.org
> > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>

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Re: Feature request: network devices

[Seth Goldberg]

Hi,

   Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important 
to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let me 
know so we can coordinate our efforts.

  Thanks,
  --S

Quoting mardok45, who wrote the following on Tue, 10 Nov 2009:

> Are you talking about Grub legacy?  I would like to use Grub2 just for the
> sake of being up-to-date.
>
> What needs to be added to Grub2 to be able to boot via TFTP?  I can't make
> any promises, but I would like to see if I can add the features myself as a
> side project (when I'm not busy with school).
>
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Vasily Averin <vvs@parallels.com> wrote:
>
>> mardok45 wrote:
>>> I'm attempting to load Grub2 off a DHCP server with Macintosh's
>>> (PowerPC) Netboot.
>>>
>>> I am able to boot Grub2, but it gives me the following errors:
>>>
>>> error: no such disk
>>> Unsupported type network for device last-boot
>>> Unsupported type network for device last-boot
>>> error: no such disk
>>
>> I've used grub from bean's git repository and lightly patched it to add
>> memdisk
>> module for efi.
>> Then I've created grub.efi binary with embed grub.cfg and embed disk with
>> kernel
>> image.
>>
>>> I'd like to make a feature request to have network device drivers.  It'd
>>> be nice to be able to boot off the network and be prompted with a menu
>>> that allows you to boot into one of several different Linux environment
>>> contained on a server.  Maintenance and imaging are the main things I
>>> want to use this for.
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Grub-devel mailing list
>>> Grub-devel@gnu.org
>>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Grub-devel mailing list
>> Grub-devel@gnu.org
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>>
>

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Bean]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important
> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let
> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.

Hi,

Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?

-- 
Bean

My repository: https://launchpad.net/burg
Document: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Burg

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Vasily Averin]

Bean wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important
>> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let
>> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?

IMHO it works well for i386 arch only. For efi it isn't.

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Bean]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Vasily Averin <vvs@parallels.com> wrote:
> Bean wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important
>>> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let
>>> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?
>
> IMHO it works well for i386 arch only. For efi it isn't.

Hi,

Right, but it shouldn't be difficult to implement if firmware support
it. BTW, i see that UEFI have PXE header files, but don't know if it's
available in real hardware.

-- 
Bean

My repository: https://launchpad.net/burg
Document: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Burg

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Vasily Averin]

Bean wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Vasily Averin <vvs@parallels.com> wrote:
>> Bean wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important
>>>> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let
>>>> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?
>> IMHO it works well for i386 arch only. For efi it isn't.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Right, but it shouldn't be difficult to implement if firmware support
> it. BTW, i see that UEFI have PXE header files, but don't know if it's
> available in real hardware.

In firmware on intel based Xserve I do not found PXE drivers. In firmware on
Xserve 3,1 I see:
intel e1000 driver
simple network protocol driver
apple netservices protocol driver
apple net load driver (tftp?)

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Seth Goldberg]

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Quoting Bean, who wrote the following on Wed, 11 Nov 2009:

> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important
>> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let
>> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
>
> Hi,
>
> Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?

   Very basic support is.  We (Sun) added a number of other things to Legacy 
GRUB (i.e. the ability to select a configuration file based on information in 
the DHCP ACK without requiring the downloading of a base grub configuration 
file -- for the simplicity and consistency of our user base, that's what I 
need from GRUB2.  Requiring the users to have a grub.cfg with a bunch of if 
statements is a non-starter, so I'm "backporting" the grub configuration file 
specialization logic to GRUB2.).  We also pass the entire DHCP ACK via a 
non-compliant method in the multiboot structure -- Vladimir suggested he'd be 
cool with extended the multiboot spec to allow that explicitly.  It prevents 
the kernel from having to restart DHCP (and for it to know from which 
interface it was booted).  I need to check again, but i don't know if GRUB's 
TFTP functionality supports different TFTP block sizes (which is important for 
us, because the boot archive we load can be quite large and can overflow the 
TFTP packet counter -- I'm not sure if GRUB2 deals with wraparound of that 
counter either).  So, to sum up, there are a number of things we need that 
don't exist right now.  And, as was mentioned, there's EFI support, which is 
also essential.  PXE under EFI exists appears to be as widespread as PXE on 
BIOS (modulo Apple hardware, as usual).

  --S

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Bean]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
>
>
> Quoting Bean, who wrote the following on Wed, 11 Nov 2009:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely
>>> important
>>> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please
>>> let
>>> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?
>
>  Very basic support is.  We (Sun) added a number of other things to Legacy
> GRUB (i.e. the ability to select a configuration file based on information
> in the DHCP ACK without requiring the downloading of a base grub
> configuration file -- for the simplicity and consistency of our user base,
> that's what I need from GRUB2.  Requiring the users to have a grub.cfg with
> a bunch of if statements is a non-starter, so I'm "backporting" the grub
> configuration file specialization logic to GRUB2.).  We also pass the entire
> DHCP ACK via a non-compliant method in the multiboot structure -- Vladimir
> suggested he'd be cool with extended the multiboot spec to allow that
> explicitly.  It prevents the kernel from having to restart DHCP (and for it
> to know from which interface it was booted).  I need to check again, but i
> don't know if GRUB's TFTP functionality supports different TFTP block sizes
> (which is important for us, because the boot archive we load can be quite
> large and can overflow the TFTP packet counter -- I'm not sure if GRUB2
> deals with wraparound of that counter either).  So, to sum up, there are a
> number of things we need that don't exist right now.

Hi,

It's already implemented in my BURG branch, check this thread:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2009-10/msg00215.html

> And, as was mentioned,
> there's EFI support, which is also essential.  PXE under EFI exists appears
> to be as widespread as PXE on BIOS (modulo Apple hardware, as usual).

If you can find related document on how to use the firmware interface,
I can integrate it into grub.

-- 
Bean

My repository: https://launchpad.net/burg
Document: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Burg

Re: Feature request: network devices

[Seth Goldberg]

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Hi,

  Thanks :).  I think what we need is a directory on the GRUB2 Wiki that 
contains pointers to major contributors' private repositories, and a 
reasonable up-to-date description of what's there -- that way, no one need 
guess or duplicate effort for all the goodies that are already done!

  --S

Quoting Bean, who wrote the following on Thu, 12 Nov 2009:

> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Quoting Bean, who wrote the following on Wed, 11 Nov 2009:
>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely
>>>> important
>>>> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please
>>>> let
>>>> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Isn't TFTP and PXE boot support in GRUB2 ready ?
>>
>>  Very basic support is.  We (Sun) added a number of other things to Legacy
>> GRUB (i.e. the ability to select a configuration file based on information
>> in the DHCP ACK without requiring the downloading of a base grub
>> configuration file -- for the simplicity and consistency of our user base,
>> that's what I need from GRUB2.  Requiring the users to have a grub.cfg with
>> a bunch of if statements is a non-starter, so I'm "backporting" the grub
>> configuration file specialization logic to GRUB2.).  We also pass the entire
>> DHCP ACK via a non-compliant method in the multiboot structure -- Vladimir
>> suggested he'd be cool with extended the multiboot spec to allow that
>> explicitly.  It prevents the kernel from having to restart DHCP (and for it
>> to know from which interface it was booted).  I need to check again, but i
>> don't know if GRUB's TFTP functionality supports different TFTP block sizes
>> (which is important for us, because the boot archive we load can be quite
>> large and can overflow the TFTP packet counter -- I'm not sure if GRUB2
>> deals with wraparound of that counter either).  So, to sum up, there are a
>> number of things we need that don't exist right now.
>
> Hi,
>
> It's already implemented in my BURG branch, check this thread:
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2009-10/msg00215.html
>
>>  And, as was mentioned,
>> there's EFI support, which is also essential.  PXE under EFI exists appears
>> to be as widespread as PXE on BIOS (modulo Apple hardware, as usual).
>
> If you can find related document on how to use the firmware interface,
> I can integrate it into grub.
>
> -- 
> Bean
>
> My repository: https://launchpad.net/burg
> Document: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Burg
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>

Re: Feature request: network devices

[mardok45]

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I am interested in it as a learning project for me.  I only have access to
New World Macintosh's, so I can only get TFTP working for Open Firmware
Mac's.  I imagine that won't be of much use to you.

Remember, I can't make any promises, but I am very interested in getting
TFTP to work (with Open Firmware) since that will make my job much, much
more centralized and convenient.

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 11:32 PM, Seth Goldberg <Seth.Goldberg@sun.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
>  Enhancing the TFTP & PXE boot capabilities of GRUB2 is extremely important
> to our use of GRUB2, so if you're interested in doing this work, please let
> me know so we can coordinate our efforts.
>
>  Thanks,
>  --S
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>

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Re: Feature request: network devices

[Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko]

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mardok45 wrote:
> I am interested in it as a learning project for me.  I only have
> access to New World Macintosh's, so I can only get TFTP working for
> Open Firmware Mac's.  I imagine that won't be of much use to you. 
>
> Remember, I can't make any promises, but I am very interested in
> getting TFTP to work (with Open Firmware) since that will make my job
> much, much more centralized and convenient. 
The best long-term and cross-platform approach is to import gpxe into
grub-extras. Are you willing to do it?

-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko



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Re: Feature request: network devices

[mardok45]

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Before I give you an answer, let me explain what I plan on doing.  If you
like it, and if I succeed, then I'll give back the changes I made.  If not,
then I won't waste everybody's time anymore.

I plan on using Macintosh's "Netboot" (which is just like PXE except for a
few minor details) to boot Grub2 off a DHCP/TFTP server.  Once loaded on the
client, Grub2 will fetch the grub.cfg from the TFTP server.

The grub.cfg will contain entries that are the same as booting off the local
disk; except in this case, it fetches the kernel and initrd via TFTP.

Adding TFTP support is all I'm going to do, nothing else.  Also, I have no
problem using Etherboot's code-base.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko <
phcoder@gmail.com> wrote:

> mardok45 wrote:
> > I am interested in it as a learning project for me.  I only have
> > access to New World Macintosh's, so I can only get TFTP working for
> > Open Firmware Mac's.  I imagine that won't be of much use to you.
> >
> > Remember, I can't make any promises, but I am very interested in
> > getting TFTP to work (with Open Firmware) since that will make my job
> > much, much more centralized and convenient.
> The best long-term and cross-platform approach is to import gpxe into
> grub-extras. Are you willing to do it?
>
> --
> Regards
> Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>
>

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Re: Feature request: network devices

[Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko]

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mardok45 wrote:
> Before I give you an answer, let me explain what I plan on doing.  If
> you like it, and if I succeed, then I'll give back the changes I
> made.  If not, then I won't waste everybody's time anymore.
>
> I plan on using Macintosh's "Netboot" (which is just like PXE except
> for a few minor details) to boot Grub2 off a DHCP/TFTP server.  Once
> loaded on the client, Grub2 will fetch the grub.cfg from the TFTP server.
>
> The grub.cfg will contain entries that are the same as booting off the
> local disk; except in this case, it fetches the kernel and initrd via
> TFTP.
>
> Adding TFTP support is all I'm going to do, nothing else.  Also, I
> have no problem using Etherboot's code-base.
>
"nothing else" is often a problem. There are dependencies too. I started
importing gpxe and till now it goes well
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko
> <phcoder@gmail.com <mailto:phcoder@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     mardok45 wrote:
>     > I am interested in it as a learning project for me.  I only have
>     > access to New World Macintosh's, so I can only get TFTP working for
>     > Open Firmware Mac's.  I imagine that won't be of much use to you.
>     >
>     > Remember, I can't make any promises, but I am very interested in
>     > getting TFTP to work (with Open Firmware) since that will make
>     my job
>     > much, much more centralized and convenient.
>     The best long-term and cross-platform approach is to import gpxe into
>     grub-extras. Are you willing to do it?
>
>     --
>     Regards
>     Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko
>
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Grub-devel mailing list
>     Grub-devel@gnu.org <mailto:Grub-devel@gnu.org>
>     http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
>   


-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko



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