Claus Andersen writes:
> 
> That is not quite obvious to me. Would a "complete" UNDI driver really be
> needed when !PXE supplies us with a high level TFTP implementation?
> If you mean stripping NFS, BOOTP, DHCP, TFTP and calling !PXE functions
> instead for a 'UNDI' driver we might agree.

My (mis)understanding of the PXE spec was that it was necessary to write
a driver to communicate with the PXE provide packet interface. (UNDI?)

Perhaps it would be fine to call the TFTP implementation instead of using
the NetBSD implementation.

> Our goals might be different - I'd be happy if where able to kickstart a
> kernel with help from PXE. A UNDI driver is "nice to have" but I do not
> think it would be widely used because of performance limitations in !PXE
> (One UDP connection at a time etc.)

Why be limited to using TFTP to retrieve a kernel?  NetBSD's netboot is
capable of pulling the kernel from an NFS mount, using rarpd/bootparam, etc.
Sure it should be possible to do everything via DHCP, but I definitely
want to load my kernels via NFS, so I don't have to stuff the right
kernel into /tftpboot on the server.

IMHO it makes more sense to just replace the lowlevel chipset specific 
code in netboot with a driver for the PXE interface.  Then we have a
fairly normal netboot that loads and "kickstarts" a normal kernel via
the established methods.  Once the kernel takes over then the PXE stuff
is gone.

-Andrew