i've been working on getting cec in 9load and that's working. the target machine broadcasts an offer of connection. the client knows to reconnect. thus one can reboot a server, talk to 9load, start plan 9 and connect to it. not as easy as serial, but it doesn't require serial and is much faster.
ideally the offer happens before ipconfig/auth have done their magic so early boot configuration may be entered. unfortunately, the rtl8169 seems to eat packets before the initial arp and the client doesn't ever get the offer. the intel pcie intel nics (ether82563.c) seem not to suffer this fate. has anyone else seen this sort of problem with the 8169? - erik
