On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 10:31:17AM -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:

This has been something I have had on my todo list for a long time and keep not getting to, so I would like to now. ;)

Currently boot.fedoraproject.org is using gpxe. These gpxe images were generated 2010-08, so they are pretty old. In the mean time, gpxe development has stopped, and efforts have moved on to the new ipxe project. ipxe has added a bunch more hardware support, including some wireless cards, efi support, etc.

I'd like to replace the existing binaries on secondary01:

$ ls -la /srv/pub/alt/bfo/bfo* -rw-rw-r--. 1 mmcgrath sysadmin-main 307200 Aug 24 2010 /srv/pub/alt/bfo/bfo.dsk -rw-rw-r--. 1 mmcgrath sysadmin-main 686080 Aug 24 2010 /srv/pub/alt/bfo/bfo.iso -rw-rw-r--. 1 mmcgrath sysadmin-main 308820 Aug 24 2010 /srv/pub/alt/bfo/bfo.lkrn -rw-rw-r--. 1 mmcgrath sysadmin-main 344064 Aug 24 2010 /srv/pub/alt/bfo/bfo.usb

with new shiny ipxe binaries:

-rw-rw-r--. 1 kevin kevin 362496 May 11 09:52 bin/ipxe.dsk -rw-rw-r--. 1 kevin kevin 1048576 May 11 09:55 bin/ipxe.iso -rw-rw-r--. 1 kevin kevin 364490 May 11 09:52 bin/ipxe.lkrn -rw-rw-r--. 1 kevin kevin 409600 May 11 09:55 bin/ipxe.usb

This should vastly increase hardware support for boot.fedoraproject.org users.

Additionally, I would update the boot.fedoraproject.org web pages to note we are using ipxe instead of gpxe. Additionally, I would be changing the embeded script in the ipxe binaries from:

#!gpxe echo Please provide, IP address, Netmask, Gateway and Router ifopen net0 config net0 set 209:string pxelinux.cfg/default set 210:string http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/gpxe/ chain http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/gpxe/pxelinux.0

to

#!gpxe echo Please provide, IP address, Netmask, Gateway and Router ifopen net0 config net0 set 209:string pxelinux.cfg/default set 210:string http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/bfo/ chain http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/bfo/pxelinux.0

I'll note there is currently NO release criteria that involves boot.fedoraproject.org Additionally, if testing shows that ipxe fails in some way we can't easily fix, it should be trivial to put the old binaries back and regroup.

Can I get +1's to this plan? :)

Sounds okay to me. Probably should have some release criteria for boot.fp.o sometime in the future.

One question I have is how this affects people who have already downloaded a bfo.* and are using that for their upgrades. That should continue to work unless the mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/* files go away, correct? Do we want to announce the change in official file location so that people are warned?

-Toshio