Subject: Re: [PATCH] gnu: grub: Support for network boot via TFTP.

From: Danny Milosavljevic <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:10:34 +0200

Hello Stefan,

I have reviewed this new patch and it looks good to me.

There's one thing, though: Where does this new bootloader get used?

I think--from reading the source code and from your previous comments--that the
bootloader gets installed on the TFTP server, but as files to be served, not to
boot the TFTP server itself.  One is basically using "guix system init" to
initialize an operating system, complete with bootloader--only it is served
by an TFTP server instead of booted locally.

Is that correct?  If so, I think we should document that fact--because that's
absolutely not obvious to a casual observer.

Also, the same files also need to be exported by an NFS server on the same
host as the TFTP server (which is a limitation.  I understand the rationale,
but the limitation has to be documented).  This should be documented not in
the bootloader (which does not require NFS at all, right?), but in
doc/guix.texi--where ideally we'd document an example system configuration
for it.

I'll leave a week for comments and then will merge either this version or an
eventual newer version to guix master.

Thanks.