Re: Univeral Protocol Driver (using UNDI) in Linux

From: Alan Shieh
Date: Fri Aug 11 2006 - 15:56:26 EST


Umm ... pardon me if I am wrong, but I think you implemented a "UNDI
Driver" (i.e. the code that provides implementation of UNDI API, and
often resides in the NIC ROM) . I'm looking forward to write a
"Universal Protocol Driver" (i.e. the code that will be a linux kernel
module and will, use the UNDI API provided by your UNDI driver).

I wrote a universal protocol driver that runs in Linux, and talks to an extended UNDI stack implemented in Etherboot.

At minimum, one needs to be able to probe for !PXE presence, which means
you need to map in 0-1MB of physical memory. The PXE stack's memory also
needs to be mapped in. My UNDI driver relies on a kernel module, generic
across all NICs, to accomplish these by mapping in the !PXE probe area
and PXE memory in a user process.


I'm pretty newbie to PXE, but I I think !PXE structure is used to find
out the location & size of PXE & UNDI runtime routines, by UNIVERSAL
PROTOCOL DRIVERS. Is my understanding wrong?

That's right.

Also, I think that UNDI driver routine will need not call PXE routines
(TFTP / DHCP etc) as UNDI routines would be at a lower level providing
access to the bare bones hardware. Is this correct?

I'm calling the UNDI level routines (packet send, interrupt handling) from my driver.

Alan
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