Feature Suggestion - Easily Customizable iPXE Binary

[Richard]

Hi, guys.

Tossing out an idea for consideration...

It seems to me that a (the?) major use case for iPXE involves just embedding a script in the bootloader. This relatively benign step is far more difficult than it should be.

For non-developers, getting their environment setup to successfully complete a full build can be more difficult than you might realize. This seems a bit over-the-top, just to embed a block of text in the binary.

Instead...
Why not provide a ready-to-go binary iPXE image (a la the ISO), then provide a tool to patch it with the user's script? A pretty generous block of space could be reserved in the executable for this, only requiring a full build for unusually large scripts.

Taking this one step further...
Why not provide the above as a service via your website. Allow a user to paste their script into a form, then immediately download the binary.

I suspect there are a lot of folks out there like myself who would like to use iPXE, but getting it configured is a real obstacle.

FWIW,
Richard

[robinsmidsrod]

I guess you haven't seen http://rom-o-matic.eu/ yet. It does just the thing.

Maybe we should try to setup a vagrantfile for people that want to make it simpler to get started tinkering with iPXE (for those sort of in between).

After you install Ubuntu in e.g. a VM, it is usually just a few apt-get commands to install everything you need. Most of the details can be found on the http://ipxe.org/download page.

[Richard]

Yep! http://rom-o-matic.eu/ looks exactly like what I'm describing. (Edit: That site is perfect! Quick and easy to use. It deserves shameless promotion in the iPXE website.)

Though my stubborn nature still wants to get the makefile working. ;-)

Cheers,
Richard