Marty, thanks for your reply.
Op zondag 22 januari 2006 03:13, schreef Marty Connor: ..... [skipped] ..... > > In my case I have succesfully created floppy boot images. Is > > it now possible (in the client system) to swap these floppy > > bootimages for > > networkcard pxe images (by programming an eprom image from rom-o- > > matic) and > > have the same machine still booted via the network? I mean is no > > there no > > bios option that needs to be changed (for example: change boot > > order. Make > > lan the first thing to try instead of the floppy disk drive). As > > far as I > > remember I have not seen a 'boot from the lan' option in the bioses > > that I > > have looked at. Is it like this, that when a pxe image is present > > in a > > network card, it automatically boots the machine? > > I did not find this explained on this page: > > http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/PXE hence I my question. > > BIOSes have evolved, and have different ways of expressing network > booting capability. If you have a reasonably recent Intel > motherboard, for instance, with a Phoenix BIOS, and you put a NIC > card in with a PXE boot ROM on it, when you go to the BOOT menu, you > can actually see the boot ROM as a boot option along with the floppy > and hard drive, and you can set its order. Checked 2 computers today and the "lan" boot option is present. unfortenately those computers are not part of the ltsp setup... > This is part of the BIOS > specification, and if your boot ROM is "PNP Conformant" (and your > BIOS is), you can set the boot priority of things like Adaptec SCSI > cards, and Ethernet Cards, and your BIOS will respect it. Hmm, how can I see that a bios or bootrom is PNP conformant (check the documentation that comes with the computer?). > Not all BIOSes correctly implement PNP, but quite a few do. A BIOS > update in many cases will help. If the BIOS copyright date is in the > early 1990s, you may have some difficulty, and in that case, > Etherboot will likely just run. > > > For the moment I just assume that pxe boots the system when it is > > present. > > This is for my next question. In case a noteboot does not support > > pxe on its > > own ethernet card (pcmcia card), would the following card make any > > notebook > > pxe enabled: > > http://www.argontechnology.com/product.aspx/cid1/103/pid/304 ? > > It sounds strange to me, that when a notebook is not aware of pxe > > on its one > > because it was never designed for it, that it would now > > automatically work > > when the above mentioned card is plugged in.... > > Product Description > Argon's EP-4103DL-PXE Cardbus Fast Ethernet PC Card with PXE > 10/100 Fast Ethernet Dongle-less PCMCIA > Complies with IEEE 802.3 10BaseT and 802.3u 100BaseTX Standards > Supports 10/100M Auto-Negotiation 32bit High Performance 100Mbps > Networking > > PXE Support included with Argon's PXE on Disk: works with Argon > Client Management > Services (CMS) PXE Server or Microsoft Remote Installation > Services (RIS). > > Hmm, I believe that you'll need to boot from their floppy to get PXE > to work. > > The technical reason is that when most notebook boot, unless their > Ethernet ports are on the motherboard, they have to initialize a PCI > to PCMCIA bridge chip. > > The question is, where is the code to do this? Well, it kind of has > to be done by the BIOS, which would then have to know how to control > whatever PCMCIA Ethernet card you happen to have plugged into your > PCMCIA slot. > > There's the rub. Unless your laptop BIOS specifically knows what > bridge chip is being used, and what PCMCIA card is being used, most > laptops without Ethernet wait for a kernel or other boot code (like > Argon's PXE on Disk (kind of like an Etherboot floppy)), to do it. > > Etherboot, unfortunately doesn't yet know how to deal with PCMCIA > buses. It's one of the things we hope to add, but so far, we do PCI > and ISA buses mainly, which takes care of the majority of cases. > We'd like to do PCMCIA and USB, and I'm sure we'll get there in time. > Someone will decide they want it, and do it or fund it, just like PXE > support. > > > I'll highly appreciate any explanation on pxe. The wiki pages are > > good, but > > unfortenately they just missed the 2 points mentioned above. > > I hope this is helpful. I think my answers are correct. I hope and > expect that someone will correct me if I am mistaken. Sofar it clarifies a lot for me. > > Another question I have (just out of curiousty); what ethercards > > support pxe > > out the box nowadays all? Or should they all get an eprom to > > enable pxe? > > Same question for notebooks, which notebooks support pxe nowadays, > > is that > > all or for example only the IBM thinkpad (that's the answer from > > google) ;) > > For an Ethernet card to support PXE out of the box, it needs a flash > EEPROM. This raises the cost, but not so much as in the old days. I > think I noticed an RTL8169 (Gigabit Card) that has PXE on it for not > too much more than $20 the other day. hmmm, that sounds attractive. But the ltsp shop site list an network card with bootrom for $20 as well (If I not mistaken). > Now, if you're a bargain hunter, you can find old Intel EEPRO100s and > 3COM 3C905CTXM cards, which have PXE in flash memory, and will > network boot by loading PXELINUX.0 from the SYSLINUX/PXELINUX/ > ISOLINUX package. Will the ltsp boot sequence do as well, or must it have to be SYSLINUX/PXELINUX/ISOLINUX package. I think the ltsp server provides PXELINUX.0. At least that is what I saw in /tftp/.... directory. -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. 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