On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 03:09:39PM +0200, Jan Trembulak wrote:

> Just for your information:
> I need to prepare a system (which supports only PXE BIOS) which has a
> critical start-up time - so any delay during the booting is undesirable. I
> need to load at first a "small" kernel which would be able to retrieve a
> "configuration" info via TCP/NFS and afterwards start "final" kernel. TFTP
> is not sufficient in my "start-up" case. Finally, I've read about
> LinuxBIOS/Etherboot project but I'm not able to change the BIOS chip - I'm
> looking for pure SW solution - no HW modification allowed.

1) One way or the other, you're going to have to use TFTP: PXE is the
name of the client side software, and it uses TFTP to download any
information.  So if you're looking for a way to eliminate TFTP, this
isn't it.

2) For a system that startup times are so critical, I'm interested to
know what advantage you're going to get with:

a) Load first kernel
b) intialize first kernel
c) initialize devices + network
d) load config file
e) load second kernel
f) Perform kexec
g) re-initialize hardware + network
h) re-load more config 
i) do work

As opposed to:

a) load full kernel
b) initialze first kernel
c) initialize devices + network
d) load config
e) do work.

Short answer:  Your solution is going to lie in producing a scaled down
kernel with exactly what you want, and a customized initramfs.

Scott

-- 
Scott L. Balneaves | "Eternity is a very long time,
Systems Department |  especially towards the end."
Legal Aid Manitoba |    -- Woody Allen

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