Re: [Xen-devel] Xen PXE solution

[Jeremy Katz <katzj@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 10:57 -0400, Andrew D. Ball wrote:
> I've been asked to work on a PXE solution for booting Xen domU's from a
> network, and would like some feedback and any help anyone is willing to
> provide.

Cool

> I've been limiting my work to HVM domU's at the moment, because I don't
> think the NBI's (as far as I know, these are bootloaders) that I have
> available work in paravirtualized domU's.  Something build around the
> Linux kernel and kexec would be really cool for paravirtualized domU's.

HVM is definitely the first step here.  

> So, I'd like to know if something like the PXE ROM's that come on most
> servers nowadays would be more useful than doing something like booting
> from PXE client ISO image.  Ideally, I think the configuration may look
> something like this:

*nod*  So are you looking at integrating into the rombios?

> (device 
>   (vif
>     (bridge xenbr0) (mac 00:16:3e:00:00:11) (type ioemu) 
>     (pxe true)
>   )
> )

Quite possibly PXE would even default to true.

> Then, I'm thinking the behavior would be to boot PXE on that NIC by
> default, then try other boot devices.  Of course, the 'boot' option that
> currently accepts 'a','b', or 'c' could include pxe as an option, but
> it's unclear to me which order the NICs would try to boot in.  Maybe all
> of the NICs with PXE ROMs in configuration order.

I think it's definitely better to go with pxe as an option to boot and
then doing the NICs in config order.  This matches up with how real
hardware works[1]

Jeremy

[1] Also -- does anyone know if the boot option currently take multiple
arguments?  I'll have to try when I get to the office.  It should be a
list and fall back through them as things aren't available so that a
default order of say PXE, CD, HD can be set up and be nice and useful :)


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