iPXE EFI

[Nicolas Huillard]

Le vendredi 01 juillet 2016 à 16:02 +0100, Paul Mansfield a écrit :
> On 1 July 2016 at 14:32, Nicolas Huillard <nicolas at huillard.net> wrote:
> > Done. It doesn't list the ethernet device. I must have booted the
> > installer off an USB drive, then network-installed the rest as usual.
> > Sorry for the wrong info ;-)
> 
> maybe iPXE can support very specific USB devices?

Sure. PXE includes device drivers for the most common ethernet cards.
That's where card compatibility is important (back in the NE2000 times,
for instance). PXE is also very common when the network card is
integrated on the main board, making driver choice obvious.
My USB ethernet adapter uses some sort of standard Ethernet over USB
protocol, making it easy to drive (using the cdc_ether kernel module).
It also implements a mode-switch protocol, making it appear as storage
upon bootup, then as an ethernet device after proper initialisation.
This is used by 3G cards to provide drivers to be installed on Windows.
This standardized behaviour make it easily recognized by standard EFI.

-- 
Nicolas Huillard