Followup to: <20020204170844.2AB5667F1@penelope.materna.de>
By author: Tobias Wollgam <tobias.wollgam@materna.de>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> We want to install PCs over ethernet with PXE. For the first boot from
> net we have nothing than the network, we don't know the hardware, so an
> UNDI in the kernel would be perfect. IMHO
>
> > I think you'll have that problem with any UNDI driver; in either case
> > I suspect that (a) performance will stink no matter what
>
> That's ok for the things we will do.
>
> > and (b) it won't work properly with SMP unless you apply really
> > heavy locking.
>
> Does it matter in our case?
>
Probably not.
>
> > The PXE people at Intel really seems enamored with the idea of using
> > the UNDI stack all the way into the operating system;
>
> We need it not to run an operating system, we need it for the
> installation of an operating system.
>
> On the other hand, UNDI will deliver a network driver for all PXE-cards
> that come up before there is any direct hardware support. (Ok, then b
> matters)
>
In theory. In practice, from having dealt with enough PXE stacks, I
would say that it is more likely you're going to have problems getting
the UNDI drivers to work in a Linux environment than you will find
that a fully equipped kernel lacks the drivers you need, especially
since you can update the kernel on the server as needed. There has
been a shakeout in the NIC world, and aren't anywhere near as many in
use now as there was a few years ago -- and anything before then isn't
going to have PXE.
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt <amsp@zytor.com> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 07 2002 - 21:00:35 EST