work needed for network booting Debian Live
On 4/27/06, Jason D. Clinton <me@jasonclinton.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 April 2006 23:43, Andrew Donnellan wrote:
> > Couldn't you use an option on the kernel commandline? Or store it on a
> > floppy disc/USB drive? Many older computers can't netboot from BIOS,
> > so something like this would be helpful. There's also things like
> > BOOTP and so on that can be used.
>
> Yes but why both? If you have the floppy/USB, that's all you need. No need to
> add a CD to the mix.
Well of course if there is a computer without a floppy drive and
without USB, or with a BIOS that doesn't support booting from USB,
then you might want a CD.
>
> Any computer made after ~1995 can be made to netboot with a proper network
> card installed in it. That's what we do; we sell NIC cards for ~$20 people to
> convert older PC's in to terminals. We used to do only LTSP but we are now
> finding that "old PC" generally means something with at least 128 MB of RAM.
> So, we thought it would be nice to run the full OS on those kinds of systems.
>
> BOOTP is a deprecated protocol very similar to DHCP. DHCP replaces BOOTP in
> every way. The process I described in my first email which uses DHCP is all
> that is needed for network booting.
OK, so if you're using DHCP why do you need to supply an IP address
for the server?
>
> > Why would you need the kernel and initrd?
>
> They are only needed in the case of trying to netboot /without/ PXE enabled
> DHCP. You need them because you need to be able to get the network card
> online so that it can talk to the server. That's what PXE enables. If you
> don't have PXE, then you have to get the entire Linux network subsystem
> online before mounting the root filesystem.
OK.
andrew
--
Andrew Donnellan
http://andrewdonnellan.com
http://ajdlinux.blogspot.com
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