new to list - pxe from floppy

[Thomas Reifferscheid]

Hi there,

my goal is to boot a pxe-boot-menu created with BSD
via dhcp and tftp.

Therefore I have two choices:

a) Booting with a NIC with a PXE-ROM (works perfectly)

b) Booting a PXE-ROM directly from floppy

And here is what I did for booting a PXE-ROM from floppy
and how far I've come:

cd grub-0.92
mkdir build
mkdir install
cd build
../configure --prefix=/scratch/grub-0.92/install --enable-3c90x
--enable-diskless --disable-serial --enable-pci-direct
make
make install

cd ../install/share/grub/i386-pc

/* INTRESTING PARTS */

dd if=stage2 of=test bs=512 count=1
dd if=pxegrub of=test2 bs=512 skip=3
cat test test2 > test3 
dd if=test3 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 seek=1

And here is the boot-result (yes, typed all by hand):


Searching Boot Record from Floppy..OK
GRUB Loading stage2...........
Found 3Com905C-TXM at 0xec80, ROM address 0xff00
Probing...[3Com905C-TXM]

3C90X Driver 2.00 Copyright 1999 LightSys Technology Services, Inc.
Portions Copyright 1999 Steve Smith
Provided with ABSOLUTLY NO WARANTY.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
MAC Address = 00:04:76:12:B8:C7
Connectors present: 10Base-T / 100Base-TX
<blinking cursor>


Here is what I have in tcpdump and syslog on server-side:
Sep  2 01:50:40 debian dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:04:76:12:b8:c7 via
eth0
Sep  2 01:50:40 debian dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 192.168.0.10 to
00:04:76:12:b8:c7 via eth0

02:01:33.195707 192.168.0.1.67 > 192.168.0.10.68: xid:0x7614caaf
Y:192.168.0.10 S:192.168.0.1 [|bootp] [tos 0x10]

(sorry for the timestamps differing :-)



Our institute has got lots of NIC's, let's say ~1000.
Most of them come with a ROM-socket, but without a ROMCard on it.

My plan is to make PXE directly bootable from floppy for the
following cards:
vortex
tulip
via-rhine

As we dont have much fun on giving all our cards a ROM, therefore
unscrewing the PC's, plugging the ROM, screwing and rebooting
the maschines,
we currently are looking for a way to boot our maschines
(just in case something goes wrong) with a floppy-disk
that can do PXE and fetch pxeboot via tftp from our
dhcp-server.

As mentioned above, this fully works for NIC's with a PXE-ROM
on it.


I've spent some little time on etherboot now, but that is no
preferrable option, as we need BSD's pxeboot coming up
with the forth-interpreter.

Then I've had some time with nilo and was fighting the oskit.

Grub and nilo look quite good, but now I'm at the point
I just dont know what and how to go on.


If I do:

stage1 and
pxegrub

the boot-process comes to 
GRUB

thats it.




Any hints and suggestions will be appreciated.



Cheers,
Thomas