[gPXE] boot selecting card (via MAC?)

[Alessandro Dentella]

Hi,

I've just installed some Linux boxes with dual boot: Windows on the HD and
Linux LTSP via gPXE.

I used Grub4dows with an entry like this:

title Linux (LTSP via gPXE)
find --set-root /boot/grub/gpxe.iso
map /boot/grub/gpxe.iso (0xff) || map --mem /boot/grub/gpxe.iso (0xff)
map --hook
chainloader (0xff)

In some pc I added a second ethernet card since the integrated one was not
fast.

The boot process sometime does not work correctly as the wrong card is used
and it waits forever or enters a reboot loop.

I could select the correct driver only but that's more complicated to manage
as I have several different cards.

Is it possible to tell the gpxe.iso which MAC address is supposed to use?

thanks in advance
sandro
*:-)
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[Shao Miller]

Not that I know of.

There were patches for gpxe.lkrn to accept a command-line, but I don't
believe they were ever merged into gPXE. If they had've been, then you
might do something like:

title Linux (LTSP via gPXE)
find --set-root /boot/grub/gpxe.iso
map /boot/grub/gpxe.iso (0xff) || map --mem /boot/grub/gpxe.iso (0xff)
map --hook

root (0xff)
kernel /gpxe.lkrn some_command_line_maybe_with_mac_address

But then you'd still need some enhanced gPXE scripting capabilities to deal
with choosing the right network interface.

I believe that this can be accomplished with iPXE.

- Shao Miller

[Shao Miller]

Oh but I should also ask: Why are you using an .ISO wrapper, when all you
really need is gpxe.lkrn? GRUB4DOS can load and execute a Linux x86
kernel-format binary directly, as my example suggests. - Shao