Re: Essential bloat
On Thu, Oct 14, 1999 at 05:00:31PM -0600, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>
> On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Matt Porter wrote:
>
> > need to be able to load the rescue/drivers over the network as well (this
> > includes high-end i386 systems which have BIOS tftpboot capability).
>
> Actually any i386 system can have tftpboot capability, it would be
> -really- great if we could make use of it in a meaningfull way.
>
> There is a package on the net called etherboot which provides bootp/dhcp
> booters for a wack of ethernet cards, you slap the 8k loader on a floppy
> stick it in and it does tftpd magic. After booting (with initrd) it could
> http over the drivers image, base images, etc etc
Yes, I've used etherboot before. However, it is really only useful for
people who bother to put a bootrom in their ethernet cards. Instead of
wasting that time most people will opt to boot/root from two floppies
and then nfs (future ftp/http) install the rest.
It is very nice to install completely over the network from a tftpbooted
kernel/initrd. That's how 95% of our PReP systems are installed since
CDROM seems so slow when you have a local mirror on 100Mbps.
> The high end systems generally use the intel spec which is not entirely
> tftp/bootp but close.
Yep, all of my company's x86 embedded products follow that spec.
--
Matt Porter
mmporter@home.com
This is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows reboot.
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