Re: pci support

[Marco Gerards <mgerards@xs4all.nl>]

vincent guffens <v.guffens@imperial.ac.uk> writes:

> Marco Gerards wrote:
>> vincent guffens <v.guffens@imperial.ac.uk> writes:
>> 
>> Hi Vincent,
>> 
>> 
>>>I was wondering if there was still an interest in pci support as
>>>discussed previously. That is a general interface exported by a module
>>>such as
>> 
>> 
>> Yes, that will make it possible to implement all kinds of drivers and
>> make something like lspci possible.
>> 
>> Sorry I still didn't start working on the networking stuff as planned.
>> Scripting and other stuff occupies me longer than I originally
>> expected. :)
>
> Sure, no problem! In fact, I was wondering if it would be possible to
> have a discussion about the overall networking strategy that will be put
> in place for grub2 (and which is schedulled for the next release !).

Sure!

> As I understand, supporting the etherboot drivers is no longer the
> primary option. As it is out of the question to have its own set of
> driver,  the UNDI driver seems like a good idea. However, UNDI support
> would constrain significantly the design of the network stack. In
> particular, it defines a lot of structure such as dhcp header, ipv4
> addresses and so on. It also involves interruption while it was assumed
> previously that the interfaces would be polled.

Well, I do not really know UNDI.  I had the impression it was able to
send and receive raw ehternet frames.  Which is what I want, nothing
more and nothing less.

At interrupt time, you can store the frames in a queue so they can be
polled at a later moment.  Or the design should be changed so
interruptions can be supported.  That's not a big issue I think.

> There is also the option of calling etherboot from grub2, which seems
> quite appealing but I think I don't really quite get that.

Is that etherboot specific or is that the case for every UNDI
implementation?

--
Marco