PXE Network Boot

[SomeJoe7777]

I purchased Memtest86 Pro edition over the weekend, intending to have it available for PXE network booting, as that is an advertised feature on the main product page. After purchase, I discovered that PXE network boot is only supported in the Site edition.

I understand that one purpose of PXE booting would be for a large company/enterprise, as it would enable you to run Memtest86 on hundreds of machines at once, which could be useful for a mass rollout of new desktops, for instance. However, this is not applicable to my business. I'm the owner of a 5-person IT support company. We have various test benches in-house for troubleshooting customer PC's, and having network boot simplifies troubleshooting, but I do not need to run Memtest86 on hundreds of machines at the same time. I really only need it to run on one or two machines at a time. Thus, the site edition is really not applicable to me, the Pro version is perfectly fine, but I need the PXE network boot option. We maintain a PXE network boot server for installation images and troubleshooting utilities, as it ensures that we always are using a consistent version, and we do not need to keep track of CDs and USB flash drives.

I'm willing to pay a modest premium for the PXE network boot option, but the site edition at $2600 is out of the question. What can be done here to enable the PXE network boot option, but restrict the simultaneous execution?

Thanks in advance.

[David (PassMark)]

Features of the different editions can be found here
https://www.memtest86.com/compare.html

What can be done here to enable the PXE network boot option, but restrict the simultaneous execution?

We don't think there is any practical way of doing this.

We can cancel & refund your order if you want to contact us.

[SomeJoe7777]

We don't think there is any practical way of doing this.

We can cancel & refund your order if you want to contact us.

Well, I'd rather not cancel and refund if I can help it, as I really like the software.

I thought of one possible way you could enforce a simultaneous restriction, but it would require some coding. Since the program boots via PXE, by definition the machine has a network interface, and since the program is UEFI it should have access to the network interface available. What you could do is periodically broadcast onto the network (every 5 seconds or so) that you are an actively running node. Then listen for other actively running nodes, as they would be broadcasting as well. If the total unique broadcasts you receive exceeds the licensing restriction, then shut down testing and return to the main menu.

You could then hard-code the EFI binary with the customer's purchased license retriction.

I know it's a lot to ask, as I'm asking you to not only add a feature, but to add a licensing edition, but I think this may be exactly what Managed IT Service Providers (MSPs) like me would want. You actually could replace the site edition with this edition, and charge by the number of simultaneous seats. Start at $99 for 1 simultaneous seat with PXE boot, and go up from there.

Sounds like a winner to me.

[David (PassMark)]

Not all machines will have the full stack of networking (UDP & TCP) at the BIOS level. The EFI binary is double code signed. We sign it and then we submit it to Microsoft to sign it (for secure boot). The process takes around a week on average per binary. So hard coding anything into the binary on a per customer basis isn't practical. It is trivial block ports on most routers so broadcasting is easy to circumnavigate. Typically broadcasting also only works on a single sub-net. Then we would also need to deal with cases where customers had 5 licenses and wanted to upgrade to 6. Would this mean a new binary? It also does nothing to solve the licensing issue for USB and CD installs.

[SomeJoe7777]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I see that there are extenuating factors.

Maybe a license server on the network could solve these issues. I would have no problem setting up a small licemse server on the same server I'm using for PXE.

The license server can have a signed license file, and hand out authenticated tokens to running clients up to the count purchased. This would work across broadcast domains, could not be blocked using firewalls (must contact the license server to run), and avoids custom binaries. The license server IP address can be handed out in the DHCP offer.

I don't know that you need to worry about USB or CD installations, as those binaries can run as they always have. Only the PXE-booted binary needs to worry about licensing.

Anyway, I know this is a long shot, but I like the discussion and I hope I've raised some future possibilities.