Mike Gerdts wrote: > On Nov 30, 2007 9:40 AM, Dave Miner <Dave.Miner at sun.com> wrote: >> 3. Our design space for the problem needs to consider the WAN >> installation case (which likely doesn't use DHCP at all as a >> configuration delivery mechanism) as a primary requirement. > > If I get it right the following are strategic directions that are decided: > > - grub on x86 for disk or network > - zfs boot on sparc > - wanboot for network on sparc > > All of technologies above work best if a miniroot is used. > > For the sake of consistency (less testing, customer mistakes, etc.) > has any thought gone into adapting grub to have a wanboot personality? > Phase 1 would be to download wanboot configuration files and do the > right thing with them. Phase 2 could be to bring in the crypto > support if there is justification[1]. >
Only some very abstract thought, in that I'd like to see things more unified and hopefully simpler, and I know a number of customers would like to see x86 have similar WAN capabilities as SPARC. One thing which WAN booting on SPARC supports is using a CD as the boot media; its main purpose is to provide the WAN capability for older systems where an updated OBP firmware wasn't provided. That seems like the way to go for the non-DHCP/PXE case on x86 as well, especially if you can use USB flash drives pre-loaded with the correct security keys. Dave
