Hello all
Im discoverin PXE and right know im as confused as excited.

Looks like i can boot a thin-client via network, but, i have some questions before i get my hands dirty.

Can i just boot linux? o i can install them as well?
and what about windows? can i have like an storage of different images so i can chose the one i want?

Yes, you can boot, I think any, linux. You can install with GUI (graphical or text), from command line or just run Live version - like from CD/USB. You can have as many versions/distributions as you wish, choosed which to load. About Windows - I saw somewhere that it can also boot from network, but need special preparation of image.

Get a knoppix 5.1 cd and boot some computer to it.

Start knoppix terminal server.

Connect a client that can boot pxe.

It should work normally.

You can then go and see how the scripts setup the pxe server and files needed to get it working.

Next take a look at GPXE.

See www.netboot.me and http://boot.kernel.org/

The most easy way I think of for windows is to use a BartsPE image but other ways exist since Windows does support remote installs.

nice

so if i boot a thin linux client, i can both connect to a server via any kind of xrdp aplication, or install in the server a ltsp client?
any other way to get a thin client?


about windows... maybe preparing a windows server with the option to share over the network an image to boot could work, and we dont mess with linux?

A true thin client has no OS. It can only boot over the network.

Most store bought thin clients have a mini os on them that allows many types of remote and networked apps.


If you need help with windows, maybe a windows forum would be a better choice?

well, if linux can handle windowsxp imagenes without problem, this is the right forum
if i need to mess up a lot with linux, then yes, this is not the forum

im asking to know where to start.

What is the usual way of doing a "Live CD" via network? Do you "take apart" the CD ISO and get the kernel out of it for booting, and pass a parameter to tell it to access the CD via the network from somewhere? Would this typically be done by just having all the files in the CD ISO be exported via NFS, or would the ISO image itself be exported in some way (as a network block device, or as a file in NFS)?

Keep in mind one aspect of running a "Live CD" is that you can make many copies of that CD and boot many machines up that way.

I suspect it's probably possible to do it all these different ways. But what ways are usually done? If you've done it, which way did you do it?

I think it depends on the kernel. For example GParted need parameter:
An Ubuntu need the following...
Using nfs server:
or using http file system:
and Debian by http:
I imitated on these configurations boot.kernel.org and on Ubuntu install documentation.

Well, linux may be able to deliver a windows image but not a normal image. You would have to create or obtain a special type of network bootable windows image. Might look at bartsPE and maybe some versions of Windows PE. See also some of the older work by bart.

As I understand it, a "Live CD" leaves the squashfs image on the physical media, rather than loading it into RAM. If there's enough RAM, loading it up should work, too. But I'd want to at least have some means if not having to do that. My thought is to have the squashfs image available in a read-only NFS export, along with enough stuff in there to bring the system up and mount that squashfs. But at that point we aren't really needing for it to be squashed, presuming the server hosting it has plenty of space. It could have an unsquashed image in any filesystem, or just export the exploded file system itself by NFS (read-only). The latter is what I'm probably going to do by manual construction effort.