On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 09:52:46AM -0500, Erik Dykema wrote: > Hello boot-meisters: > This morning I had the following brilliant idea; > > Would it be possible to connect two computers, perhaps a (desktop || > server) system, and a (laptop || portable) with a USB cable, and have > one of the systems act as a USB storage device, and the other boots off > of it, just like it was any other USB storage device, like a keychain or > hard drive? > > I googled for a while and found this page: > http://www.linux-usb.org/usbnet/ > > It tells me that you can't connect two machines with a regular USB > cable, but that special host-to-host cables exist. There was no mention > of this host-to-host booting thing in their FAQ though, at least as far > as I could see. > > For the following reasons, I think this might be interesting / useful: > > A general purpose device (such as a laptop computer) should be able to > emulate a special purpose device (a USB HDD enclosure). > > You could help your friends install linux on their computers just by > plugging the cable in to your computer (potentially simpler than setting > up dhcp / tftp / pxelinux). You still have to setup the same functionality. Potentially it will be complexer due 'usb0' lesser use the 'eth0'
> > If the machine exporting the USB storage was active, you could fiddle > around with the install media as the install was happening. > > Has anyone given any thought to this before? Insights? Yes... The way to go is the same way as the PPP installs ( kernel with support for the hardware (s/adsl-modem/USBnet device/ ) tell debian-installer to use the special interface s/ppp/usb/ ) with a major difference, you have to setup the server your self ( PPP installs can use the exsisting Debian servers on the Internet ) > > thanks, > Erik Geert Stappers -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
