QEMU with network boot

[Bakul Shah]

On Wed, 07 May 2008 22:14:37 +1000 Edwin Groothuis <edwin at mavetju.org>  wrote:
> Nearly like a charm. Well, the PXE part does work now, but the BTX
> part is not good.
> 
> It doesn't matter if I use an pxeboot from an 6.3 system or an 7.0
> system. This happens with both emulators/qemu as with emulators/qemu-devel.
> 
> Any idea where to look now?

I should've mentioned I am using FreeBSD-current which has
a working pxeboot thanks to jhb.  It netboots with my patched
etherboot bios but fails with bioses distributed with qemu.
My year old patch works around etherboot's length related
bug -- a TFTP data mode packet with length=0 confuses qemu's
roms.  I just realized we can make a fix elsewhere to
make the stock qemu bios work!  It is a complicated fix so
be prepared to really understand it.  Ready?

Here is how:

    echo >> $tftproot/boot/pxebot

:-)
The default NE2000 NIC works fine too but you may want to use
rtl8139 for better performance.