Mats Erik Andersson wrote:
To what extent does gPXE presently interface "well" with Coreboot?
Very little. Without the work as outlined by Chris gPXE does not function as a payload at all. Etherboot works just fine however.
Is the position identical for coreboot-v2 and coreboot-v3?
Yes.
- Is there an available and ready interface in Coreboot that allows the detection of an PXE-ROM image inside an PCI ethernet card adapter?
If by PXE-ROM you mean option ROM then yes, coreboot scans for option ROMs.
Can execution be transferred to a copy of that code segment?
No, if option ROMs are executed they are executed in emulated real mode. Either in VM8086 mode, or using x86emu.
- Is it known whether a "slimmed down" gPXE can be built and incorporated into a Coreboot image under the lesser demand that the purpose of the gPXE code is only that of getting and running the executable "pxelinux.0", fetched from another server, thus making the system autonomous?
This is not possible.
There could possibly exist some code segment in PXElinux that depends on either 16-bit mode, or lagacy Bios calls, but I do not a priori know that with any certainty!
Yes, PXE requires real mode and BIOS interrupt services.
But all network booting is not PXE. PXE is just a standard with a limited subset of what Etherboot and gPXE can do. They can both simply use DHCP+TFTP to boot a system, and that will work just fine with coreboot.
//Peter