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Date:      Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:08:43 -0800 (PST)
From:      Doug Ambrisko <ambrisko@whistle.com>
To:        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: netboot & ELF kernels
Message-ID:  <199901131708.JAA29927@whistle.com>
In-Reply-To: <199901131212.OAA10481@ceia.nordier.com> from Robert Nordier at "Jan 13, 99 02:12:01 pm"

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Robert Nordier writes:
| Bjoern Fischer wrote:
| 
| > I've recently noticed that ELF is now default on a
| > kernel build. No problems with ELF kernels on a server
| > machine, but netboot fails to load an ELF kernel (lack
| > of support, it seems).
| > 
| > Is it on the list to add support for ELF kernels to
| > netboot? Or, is there any alternative way to boot
| > a diskless machine (diskless -- not even a floppy)?
| 
| One alternative is Etherboot (http://www.slug.org.au) which Doug
| Ambrisko <ambrisko@whistle.com> has patched for FreeBSD and which
| will most likely be added to the ports collection.
| 
| I've been sitting on this for some time (sorry, Doug), but will
| try to finish looking at it in the next few days.

I've been meaning to ask you about them.  I know they are not perfect
but something is better then nothing!  Hopefully some other people
can work on making it better once the port is made.  The complicated
part is that it depends on the linux-devel package and a slight change.
What I did was replace the linux ld with a perl script to run brandelf
linux after the ld was done.  This was due to the Etherboot package
creating static bins that are required during the build process.

This package has a lot of nice features:
      -	Select different kernels to boot (including Dos images)
      - Pass in FreeBSD boot flags via bootp request
      - uses tftp for loading kernel (some may argue this is not a nice
	feature but I like it for a bunch of reasons ... no need for 
	nfs if kernel has a mfs file system)
      - Supports more ethernet cards then FreeBSD netboot
      - This package seems to be actively supported
      - Supports both FreeBSD ELF & a.out formats

I use this package all the time every day ... well my regression system
here does.  I like being able to control it via dhcpd.

If I should send it to someone else to look at I can or maybe I can get
Julian or Archie to add it.

Doug A.

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