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
>
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