Not that i really tried it, but some computers have bootable USB or can be flashed updated to do that, and if you already have a network card for them then it would be a shame to waste money on another. you can get a 16mb bootable usb like "easydisk" and do your booting from there. it should cost around 50nis, a lot less then an expensive PXE card.
* - * - * Tzahi Fadida MSc Student Information System Engineering Area Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Technion City, Haifa, Israel 32000 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Technion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * WARNING TO SPAMMERS: see at http://members.lycos.co.uk/my2nis/spamwarning.html > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of > Yedidyah Bar-David > Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 7:35 AM > To: Shaul Karl > Cc: Geoffrey S. Mendelson; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; IGLU Mailing list > Subject: Re: linux remote booting > > > On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 03:22:17AM +0300, Shaul Karl wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 12:45:52AM +0300, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > > > I whant to settled up a main server and a number of > > > > diskless terminals. So I got some questions. > > > > > > > 1. what network card I can use to boot from a remote > > > > linux/unix server > > > > > > Any card that has a boot rom and is supported in the kernel you boot from. > > > The Intel cards are nice, very reliable and I think they all come with > > > a boot rom now. > > > > > > > > > I believe that what unique to some degree in at least some Intel cards > > and counts here is PEX. I am not sure about the name but I do believe > > that it is a feature that helps to bring the remote machine up. Do post > > more details if you have one. > > There are actually tons of docs on this subject, including some > Howtos ("Linux Remote-Boot mini-HOWTO", "Network Boot and Exotic Root > HOWTO", "Diskless Nodes HOW-TO" (and some others with "Diskless" in > their name)) and some sites (such as <http://www.ltsp.org>). Don't > mind asking specific questions, though. There are some people on > the list (including me) that have some experience with this. > > What Shaul referred to is called PXE, and is the most common standard > for remote booting (but not the only one). You can boot linux with > it semi-directly (with pxelinux), or through pxegrub (that's what we > do here). > > While we also have very good experience with Intel NICs (even though > we had problems with some of them, mainly onboard ones), they are > quite expensive - about 4-5 times the price of the cheapest you'll > find. However, the cheapest ones won't necessarily have any boot > rom, or one that you can use with Linux, so check (and ask here or > elsewhere) before you buy. PXE is almost always a safe bet. If you > get some good, cheap, software-programmable-ROM-based card (Flash > or some such - if the manufacturer has ROM updates on their website > it's a good sign) that is not PXE-compliant, you can try to put on > it etherboot. > > If you can't find cheap cards with a suitable bootrom, and do not > mind having small disks on the clients (which you want anyway for > swap etc.), you can also put etherboot on the disks. I do this when > I don't have PXE, and the only difference (besides a small change on > the dhcp server) is that I rely on the disk for booting (and if you > put small, old ones, the chances are bigger for them to die). > -- > Didi > > > -- > > > > Shaul Karl, shaul @ actcom . net . il > > > > ================================================================= > > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
