GNU bug report logs - #41011
[PATCH] gnu: grub: Support for network boot via tftp/nfs.

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From: Stefan <stefan-guix <at> vodafonemail.de>
To: Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer <at> gmail.com>
Cc: Danny Milosavljevic <dannym <at> scratchpost.org>, 41011 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: [bug#41011] [PATCH] gnu: grub: Support for network boot via tftp/nfs.
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:12:03 +0200

Hi Maxim!

> I see. Then we're talking about TFTP support in GRUB, and it doesn't
> seem to depend on EFI at all (which is good!).

Well, the data transfer in GRUB is using TFTP, but the actual network driver, the facilities to start a kernel and so on, happens by GRUB via the EFI-API in my case, which is provided by the U-Boot.

It may be a runtime detection, if the EFI-API or the legacy BIOS functions are used. I don’t know.

In that case I should probably rename grub-efi-net to grub-net.

> Yes. For having done it recently, enabling the NFS support in the kernel
> doesn't require much change, but then supporting a vast array of network
> cards directly in the kernel doesn't sound too appealing. IIUC, going
> through an initrd allows dynamically loading kernel modules instead of
> having them statically built in the kernel (so that a user could add a
> network module of their choice to their OS declaration without having to
> rebuild the default kernel), which is why it's better to go that route
> in Guix.
> 
> Am I understanding things correctly?

Yes. And additionally as a beginner I simply don’t want to try to remove the initrd, I can’t even imagine the effort to do so. :-)


Bye

Stefan

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