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Bug#607417: ΑΠ: win32-loader: please offer a "Boot from network with gPXE" option



Le Wednesday 2 February 2011 14:26:25, vous avez écrit :
> Hi,

Hi Yannis and thanks for your extended review,

> Vaggelis forgot to mention that in order to have the pxe functionality work
> properly you must follow the 1-4 steps:
> 
> 1)The linux, initrd.gz, pxe.lkrn (gpxe 1.0.0) files must be placed in the
> root folder.

I agree that pxe.lkrn has to be placed in the root folder. That's the point of 
the pxe.target to "depend" on pxe.lkrn. I will enhance the code when {g,i}PXE 
enters Debian in order to copy the pxe.lkrn directly (as is done for gl2dr and 
loadlin.exe).

But I disagree with including linux and initrd.gz within the PXE patch, see 
below.

> 2)The file debian/rules must have the PXE=yes option, instead
> of STANDALONE=yes.

… only if you want to build a Debian package out of it. Otherwise, just run 
"PXE=yes make" and you'll get a PXE-enabled win32-loader.exe.

> 3)The Makefile must have:
> 
> 	pxe.target: pxe.lkrn linux initrd.gz templates/ternary_choice.ini
> 
> 	instead of
> 	pxe.target: pxe.lkrn templates/ternary_choice.ini

Same remark as 1), see below.

> 4)The main.nsi should be patched with main.nsi.diff.

(As a side remark, could you please use "diff -Naur" when providing diffs, it's 
way easier to patch back.)

What your main.nsi.diff "patch" does is that it "embeds" a complete debian-
installer linux kernel and initrd.gz (which makes it fail with kfreebsd…). The 
current win32-loader approach is to rely on Debian mirrors (and internet 
connectivity) to get the latest released debian-installer kernels and initrd's. 
Bundling a specific d-i version into a Windows executable defeats the fact that 
the current 0.6.22 win32-loader will be able to download _any_ future "stable" 
Debian-Installer.

But I can acknowledge that bundling specific versions can be useful. Could you 
please report a bug (with wishlist severity) against win32-loader with a title 
like "Please add a d-i bundling possiblity" ?

> Another issue to consider is that when a user installs win32loader in pxe
> mode, description in boot menu isn't very clear ("continue with install
> process"). I think that in pxe mode you should better change this message
> to "Continue with network boot" in file l10n/win32-loader.sh (line 81)

Same here; I plan to enhance the reboot messages shown by the Windows 
bootloader. It'd be nice if you could report a wishlist bug against win32-loader 
with a title like "Please enhance the reboot messages."

> Yannis

So, given the messages received so far and my present answer, I am pretty 
confident that the PXE patch does basically what you need; I will proceed in 
merging the pxe branch to "master". Other enhancements will certainly happen, 
but please report separate bugs (it's not a matter of blocking discussion, but 
to keep the "one problem is one bug" motto).

Cheers, 

OdyX
-- 
Didier Raboud, proud Debian Developer.
CH-1020 Renens
odyx@debian.org

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