Boot from Network
 

hey guys,

need a little help i am new to this. i bought a new pc p4 2.8 128mb ram but yes no hdd, cuz thts how the boss wants it. now how to boot a pc from the network. the server has slackware 9.1 installed .. how do i boot from the network /serve? once i am up and running , i start the installation over the network thts a peice of cake but how to boot from the network.

No HDD or no CDROM Drive?

Here, I found something.

no hd and no cdrom only floppy drive but the boss wants me to boot from the network how do i do tht`

ONE:

you will need to create a boot floppy from another computer
with these requirements:

-support for your nic
-support for nfs

you will also need an initrd to mount the nfs share and load modules (if that is what you compiled) for your nic and nfs support.

TWO:
Ask your boss how to do it, if he thinks he's so smart.

I recommend doing in this order, proceeding to the next one only if the previous doesnt work:
TWO, ONE

Good Luck

ya thanks dude. but he dont want me to boot from floppy he says find out a way to boot from the network and not boot from network server.

Does your LAN card support PXE booting? You will any ways require a server from where your PC has to pick up some sort of image to boot up to a useful level.

wht is pxe booting. how do i find tht out. and if yes then how to set it up. the card is dlink DFE 538 TX ..

I found some info about the DFE530TX card ... on the DLink Site

D-Link's DFE-530TX+ also supports optional advanced networking support features like Wake-On-LAN and Boot ROM. Computers and operating systems that support the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) can remotely wake your PC from anywhere on the network with Wake-On-LAN. With the addition of an optional Boot ROM with PXE support, the DFE-530TX+ can support network booting of supported operating systems.

guru,

now tht we know this nic supports pxe boot and wake on lan. wht do we do next. how do we get it up and running..



`

Use pressing
alt-f12
doing boot

http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software...an/mini-howto/

Another link that might be of value.

well, booting linux via the network is a bit hard. currently i am writing software to manage all this kind of stuff. But i probably will not release it untill next year.


But basically if you can program you can probably netboot linux.


soooooooooooooooooooo.


First you need to recompile the linux kernel with root on nfs support. then you need to make a new initrd image which loads the network adapter, though you could compile it into the kernel as well. But i don't.



then you need to download and install pxelinux, this is because x86 can only netboot at most 512k kernels.

So you configure dhcp to load pxelinux, and then configure pxelinux to load the real kernel and initrd.


From this point linux should boot, but you have to tell it where to mount a nfs root. This can be passed to the kernel on boot or manually with in the initrd(i do because it is less error prone).


once you have this working you can dump an installed linux distro at the nfs mount point. First mount the point rw, and fix all errors inside your startup scripts. then if you want you can change the mount to ro.


also you will need more memory then 128mb if you are planing on using X. I use 512mb workstations.
You can swap over nfs is you really want but who really cares, get more memory.


Also if you don't understand any of this, then don't bother. paying a few $$$ for a hdd is soooo much easier.

i have a PXE netbooting machine.... hope this is useful

http://mini-itx.com/projects/animalsnes/

Thats right leckie thats the same thing that isaid

what im saying is no booting from floppy, it is using floppy to assist in booting from network