Netboot?

[blake]

Do the new mactel boxes use PXE or has apple embedded their own goodies into the EFI?

[maccanada]

PXE is part of BIOS. EFI has full networking capabilities built-in, based on Free BSD’s TCP/IPv4 stack.

From kernelthread.com:
FI’s pre-boot environment is also meant to facilitate robust solutions for secure network booting, secure network resetting, remote provisioning and setup (through bootable “agents” that are EFI objects), remote management of system firmware, and so on. Thus, it is easier to deploy and manage a large number of “headless” servers.

So, yes, EFI contains a whole bunch of goodies previously unavailable which should lead to greater control of machines pre-boot, not just for Netboot, but also ARD.

~Ian

[akinspe]

For those curious about NetBoot, it should be of little surprise that you’ll have to maintain separate images for PowerPC and Intel macs. Somewhere in my dreams I hoped that you could use the same image, but that would require some impossible magic.

In case you doubt:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303113

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