17:10:31 <MerlinTHP> #startmeeting
17:10:31 <zodbot> Meeting started Sat Dec  5 17:10:31 2009 UTC.  The chair is MerlinTHP. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
17:10:31 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
17:10:35 <MerlinTHP> Got it :)
17:12:29 <ianweller> MerlinTHP: you transcribing?
17:12:46 <MerlinTHP> Yep
17:12:58 <MerlinTHP> Badly, no doubt.
17:13:02 <MerlinTHP> But I'll give it a go
17:13:31 <MerlinTHP> Quick intro to network booting
17:14:25 <MerlinTHP> The official PXE standard is unimplementable
17:14:38 <MerlinTHP> But everyone has agreed on a roughly working implementation
17:14:47 <MerlinTHP> gPXE is the first full GPL PXE implementation
17:15:03 <MerlinTHP> Supports a hugenumber of network cards
17:15:20 <MerlinTHP> 10/100/1000, infiniband and wireless support
17:15:54 <MerlinTHP> Supports HTTP(S), FTP, FSP, NFS, ISCSI, AOE, TFTP, DNS
17:17:29 <MerlinTHP> gPXE needs to fit in 64k, so the HTTPS crypto stack is limited.
17:17:49 <MerlinTHP> No certificate verification.
17:18:27 <MerlinTHP> boot.kernel.org is gPXE + syslinunx + PXE Knife
17:19:03 <MerlinTHP> Google SoC project, worked on by Pravin Shinde
17:19:22 <abadger1999> #topic boot.kernel.org
17:19:43 <MerlinTHP> Fedora only "vague works"
17:19:52 <MerlinTHP> Need to kill NetworkManager during boot.
17:21:32 <MerlinTHP> boot.kernel.org is mirrorable, but there aren't any mirrors yet
17:21:56 <MerlinTHP> Q: what architectures does it support
17:22:20 <MerlinTHP> x86 and x86_64, due to PXE
17:23:47 <MerlinTHP> Q: PPC, SPARC etc uses OpenFirmware which natively supports network boot, but they only support tftp, could gPXE be chainloaded from OF?
17:23:56 <MerlinTHP> Not currently.
17:24:55 <MerlinTHP> All boot requests go to a central server over the internet (currently kernel.org's GeoDNS)
17:25:26 <MerlinTHP> <Live demo>
17:26:00 <MerlinTHP> Booting a VM in VMWare.
17:26:06 <MerlinTHP> Just booting a floppy disk image.
17:28:44 <MerlinTHP> Fetched a pxe loader and menu configs from kernel.org in calif.
17:29:21 <MerlinTHP> Menu allows selection of lots of linnux distros, including going back to RHL 6.0
17:30:38 <MerlinTHP> Persistant storage in live images isn't currently supported
17:30:51 <MerlinTHP> No current plan to extend support to include it.
17:31:45 <MerlinTHP> Q: How do I use boot.kernel.org today?
17:31:57 <MerlinTHP> Go to boot.kernel.org, download a boot image.
17:32:55 <MerlinTHP> Adding new distros is server side, so you only have to burn the image once.
17:33:13 <MerlinTHP> USB image, Floppy image, CD image.
17:34:41 <MerlinTHP> gPXE supports wireless, but boot.kernel.org doesn't yet.
17:35:35 <MerlinTHP> Install image defaults to DHCP, can fall back to manual config
17:36:56 <MerlinTHP> boot.kernel.org/bko/ are the config files for syslinux, etc
17:38:34 <MerlinTHP> Q: do you need to use the boot iamges?
17:39:06 <MerlinTHP> No, you can pass a machine the boot.kernel.org boot images from your own local PXE server
17:40:09 <MerlinTHP> Q: why shuld I use boot.kernel.org rather than eg. an F12 install disk?
17:40:33 <MerlinTHP> 500K download.
17:41:18 <MerlinTHP> Network installer will only download the packages you select.
17:41:29 <MerlinTHP> Network install tree may have more pacakges than the dvd image.
17:41:55 <MerlinTHP> Mirrors could potentially stop shipping as many CD images, cut down traffic
17:42:47 <MerlinTHP> Supports many arches of amny distros from one small boot image.
17:44:35 <MerlinTHP> Been talking with Jesse Keating about using it for testing fedora live images.
17:45:08 <MerlinTHP> Testers boot the boot.kernel.org image, and use the live image over the network, rather than downloading the entire image.
17:45:53 <MerlinTHP> SuSE isn;t supported, due to problems with their initrd, and their network install system.
17:46:52 <MerlinTHP> Q: what's the difference between boot.kernel.org and fedora's netboot.iso?
17:47:08 <MerlinTHP> Smaller, supports more than just one version of fedora.
17:49:23 <MerlinTHP> Could have a chainload added in, pointing to a menu config on fedora's infrastructure, allowing fedora to control part of the menu system, allowing more spins to be added.
17:50:57 <MerlinTHP> The boot.kernel.org infrastructure is "owned" by John.
17:51:34 <MerlinTHP> Q: mac support?
17:52:13 <MerlinTHP> Macs support their own protocol, would need to be added to upstream tools.
17:53:17 <MerlinTHP> Pull the git tree, run make
17:53:58 <MerlinTHP> Come back after it's pulled down the distro install images, and built the boot images.
17:55:32 <MerlinTHP> Q: why isn't this in fedora?
17:56:17 <MerlinTHP> Challenging to package
17:56:28 <MerlinTHP> Builds gPXE etc at image build time.
17:57:38 <MerlinTHP> Lots of boot.kernel.org users in europe
17:57:46 <MerlinTHP> Twice as much traffic as the US
17:58:07 <MerlinTHP> kernel.org doesn't have any servers outside the US and Europe
17:59:01 <MerlinTHP> The End.
17:59:03 <MerlinTHP> (TM)
17:59:20 <MerlinTHP> #endmeeting