Re: linux remote booting
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 08:35:11 +0300 Yedidyah Bar-David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can boot linux with it semi-directly (with pxelinux), or through pxegrub (that's what we do here). Unrelated question: I use grub/pxegrub as well. However, I couldn't find a way (didn't hack the source yet) to have a boot menu with both a network boot entries and several local boot entries. What happens is that when I use regular grub, it doesn't know about network devices (nd), and when I use pxegrub, it only knows about either (nd) or local (not specific (hd)...). My current ugly workaround is boot from pxegrub with a menu of: local network boot And have the local entry boot a regual grub from the MBR with all the local operating systems on this computer. Any better options? 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. Or even on floppy which I once used on my old firewall. Since the etherboot image is very small (1/2K ?) the bios access the floppy very quickly ( 1second) and it doesn't slow the boot like normal floppy-based linux. -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron c:\winnt secure_nt.exe Securing NT. Insert Linux boot disk to continue.. --David Brumley = 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]
linux remote booting
Hi, 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 2. what is an efficient way to share files from a main sever to those terminals. = 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]
Re: linux remote booting
[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. 2. what is an efficient way to share files from a main sever to those terminals. NFS, make sure your blocksize is 8k for read and write. NFS version 2 over UDP is the most efficent, but NFS version 3 over TCP is more reliable. Swaping over NFS is a disaster. If you must have swap to run, then use a small local disk for it. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 972-54-608-069 Icq/AIM Uin: 2661079 MSN IM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Not for email) Carp are bottom feeders, koi are too, and not surprisingly are ferrets. = 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]
Re: linux remote booting
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 10:38:04AM +0200, Tzahi Fadida wrote: 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. Couldn't find anything below around 70NIS. There are some cheap cards with an optional ROM socket. A software-programmable chip will probably be a bit hard to find, but EPROM is quite cheap and common - you can even buy your own programmer (a cheap one will cost around 200-300 NIS). -- Didi = 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]
RE: linux remote booting
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]
Re: linux remote booting
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 09:29:55AM +0300, Oron Peled wrote: On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 08:35:11 +0300 Yedidyah Bar-David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can boot linux with it semi-directly (with pxelinux), or through pxegrub (that's what we do here). Unrelated question: I use grub/pxegrub as well. However, I couldn't find a way (didn't hack the source yet) to have a boot menu with both a network boot entries and several local boot entries. What happens is that when I use regular grub, it doesn't know about network devices (nd), and when I use pxegrub, it only knows about either (nd) or local (not specific (hd)...). My current ugly workaround is boot from pxegrub with a menu of: local network boot And have the local entry boot a regual grub from the MBR with all the local operating systems on this computer. Any better options? I am sorry, but I do not see your problem here. The following two entries work for me with pxegrub: == title RedHat 7.3 Linux 2.4.20 for Pentium III or higher dhcp root (nd) kernel /linux-2.4.20-net2 ramdisk_size=1 root=/dev/ram ip=off nousb init=/pr einit initrd=/root.gz boot title Boot Linux 2.4.2-2 RedHat 7.1 from the local disk root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2 root=/dev/hda1 ip=off nousb boot == What happens when you try something like the second one with pxegrub? -- Didi = 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]
Re: linux remote booting
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. -- 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]
