The issue is you have a mix of people, skills, uses, and different
goals.  Your intentions are good, but in practice "how to" things for
something with so many variables end up cheating people out of learning
proper setup.  If you don't know why you're doing something you also
don't know if it's secure.  If you're running a Soekris, it probably has
to do with higher end (than the shiny blue/black box routers)
applications, special requirements, or a cool toy.  There are enough
tutorials and how to web pages for this already.  They tend to be OS
specific as they should.  When I got my first 4801 I followed a few of
these and had a heck of a time getting them to boot pxe... Wasted the
free time of a few days.. When I finally read the official OpenBSD FAQ
for pxe and followed it, I was up in less than 5 minutes.  I'm sure the
same goes for other operating systems.  

If Soren puts up one of these here, then he has to maintain it.  His is
a small operation that obviously would be better suited to developing
new products and selling boxes than to be repeating and being held
liable for generic information that would come from the respective OS.
There are enough links on the Soekris.com site to get started with just
about anything.  Links from those links and a little internet searching
will get you where you want to go.

If independent people (and you are asking for this, but not offering to
do it in the first place...) create tutorials/how to's they tend to work
well for a while, then get outdated quickly, but not before being linked
by a bunch of other sites and saved in lots of archives, only to steer
people down the wrong or outdated path for years to come.  

Not trying to smash your idea to help others, but an official cookbook
would not be a good idea, neither would an independent one.  If you
wanted to put up a page with some pointers and links to official FAQ's
on the respective OS web sites, this might help.  It would be a lot more
likely to stay current and would be easier to maintain, but I still
disagree with anything that approaches spoon feeding, even if it's just
to boot the box.  

Mike
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