[finnix] Attempting to be sneaky with pxeboot, need help.

[Ferenc Wagner]

Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> writes:

> Joel Stiller <joelstiller at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> My goal is to boot finnix over the network, using only the kernel and
>> the minirt image file.
>
>  1. Patch /init in minirt like:
>
> --- /tmp/minirt/init   2009-12-13 14:56:29.966203814 +0100
> +++ init               2009-12-13 21:38:05.542150745 +0100
> @@ -280,6 +280,11 @@
>   FINNIX_CLOOP="$USERROOT"
>   FOUND_FINNIX="yes"
>  
> +# use it from the initramfs
> +elif [ -e "$FINNIXFILE" ]; then
> + FINNIX_CLOOP="$FINNIXFILE"
> + FOUND_FINNIX=yes
> +
>  # ELSE SQUASHROOT SKIP
>  else
>  
>  2. Add FINNIX/FINNIX to minirt.

Before this stuff gets lost, I'd like to point out that the multi-initrd
capability of boot loaders makes the above patch a useful addition to
stock Finnix as well: those wanting to PXE boot Finnix could create a
single file secondary initrd passed to pxelinux as initrd=minirt,finnix
for example (where finnix is a cpio archive containing FINNIX/FINNIX),
without the need to modify the stock minirt.

I'd be glad to see this added to Finnix, if possible.

This style of booting has the drawback that it requires memory of at
least twice the size of FINNIX/FINNIX, because the initrd has to be
unpacked in memory.  Half of this memory is freed right after unpacking,
but it would be nice to weaken this requirement.  The new memdisk-iso
feature of Syslinux paired with a memdisk driver for Linux would be the
best solution I can think of.
-- 
Regards,
Feri.