MaRX@Speedy

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Hello everybody

I'm in a need of a dist and system which can boot up linux.

At the moment running system which is based on debian with dhcp + pxe + tftp.
No problems - works great - but client computers are variable, every nic isn't the same the last one was.
New motherboards have new nics so my images maybe doesnt have proper drivers,

!- Now i want to build system what works with every NIC i can find- as far as it can boot something via network. -!

Could it use somehow the same systems than regular pxe boot before it downloads any images from the server?

Is that possible and if it is - is there any howto's or guides in net? havent found a one.

Use for this is ghost4linux and fileserver. tons of images to quickly restore some computer's hard disk.
Dont ask why this sort of system, this is just good system for my use =)

Hopefully i was able to tell problem well enough =)

Thanks for answers - MaRX

pinniped

It all depends on when the data is transferred. On a machine capable of PXE/tftp boot, the BIOS drives the NIC. A kernel image is then loaded and started. The big question is: is the BIOS responsible for downloading the initrd image, or is the kernel responsible for that? If it is the kernel responsible, then it is not possible to do a PXE boot without a NIC driver. If it is the BIOS responsible, then the boot should be fine (except of course your client will have no LAN access).

Since you already set up images etc, just create one more where the kernel has absolutely no NIC drivers built in and try to boot it.