On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Itay Gazit <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Joshua, all, > > Continue to our discussion we had a while ago, I continued my testing on > entering CLI during POST. > > At this experiment I changed the main() to a blank function. > > I tested 19 different models machines. The results were that 5 of the 19 > hanged when exiting from CLI! Including machines from HP, IBM and > SuperMicro. > > My conclusion is that regardless the memory consumption, there is a major > problem in gPXE when exiting from gPXE during POST. > > As I mentioned before, having a reliable CLI during POST is important. > > I am willing to continue debug this issue, if you have any idea on how to > solve it then please let me know.
I appreciate the testing you've done. This is a problem with the BIOS on these machines. On many BIOSes, it is simply not possible to enter protected mode during POST; attempting to do so will cause booting to ultimately fail. There are two solutions: - have gPXE provide only limited POST-time functionality with real-mode code; - don't try to use the CLI during POST The first is extremely difficult. The second is extremely easy. I don't understand - why is it so necessary that you enter the CLI during POST, as opposed to doing it when gPXE is invoked as a boot device? -- Josh _______________________________________________ gPXE mailing list [email protected] http://etherboot.org/mailman/listinfo/gpxe
