on Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 11:47:09PM -0500, will trillich (will@serensoft.com) wrote:
> Point me to the faq -- i don't know where to look for it or what
> it might be named...
>
> Objective: to create a bootable CD for a Debian network
> hub-like system that'll have NO hard drive (and probably no
> keyboard or monitor, either). booting from rad-only media
> assures simplicity of recovery in case anything gets borked
> (black hats, misfortune, unintentional changes).
>
> I'm setting up a debian/potato install to fit on a CD rom that
> i'd like to have as bootable -- in that i'd like to use the CD
> rom as the SOLE non-network device on a no-disk server.
> I.e. old pentium box with a cd rom and floppy drive (for variable
> settings) but no hard drive, eventually.
Couple of points.
- You're probably interested in the BootDisk HOWTO
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/
- There are also HOWTOs covering diskless workstations and such. I
believe it's possible to get x86 hardware to boot and find a kernel
via BIOS-activated networking.
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO/
- Disk is cheap. Bandwidth still sucks. System and distro
maintenance are both time-consuming and expensive. The ideal
"diskless" client isn't truely diskless, but transparently caches a
configuration driven by a configuration served over the network.
System data are backed off to network, user data are similarly
cached locally only until they can be archived to network.
A dream to date, but a pleasant one.
- On the Debian side, there's a boot floppies package somewhere, I
think, but I can't find it right now.
> Of course, to get there, i'm installing and testing and tweaking
> on a hard drive. But the end result should be a bootable CD that
> doesn't need a hard drive at all.
>
> I can partition my current drive with a 600mb partition which
> would fit on a CD, and get it working -- on hard disk, anyway --
> and create an ISO image (mkisofs i presume?) But there's so
> much writing to /var and /tmp by ordinary procedures that i
> wonder if a read-only boot can work at all! Is there some way to
> make a ram disk (as i think the debian rescue/install CD does)
> during boot-up from such a CD rom?
You'll almost certainly need *some* local storage, even if proxied
through a RAMdisk. Note that /var content will tend to need to be
stored.
> and then, once i have an ISO image, can i ftp that to a win or
> mac box to burn the cd? i haven't got a burner for my debian
> monster yet... :(
Yes.
> so, regarding all these points:
> - what's it take to create a cd image
> - that's bootable
> - from a working hard-drive based system
> - that'll peel off into ramdisk for /var & /tmp writing
> - and that will be able to read (settings) from /dev/fd0
> - perhaps logging remotely, based on those settings
Peek at the LinuxCare BBC data and Seth Shoen's work for more info.
> i ask:
>
> how? <-- such a little question, needing such a big answer :)
How much?
> pointers hither and yon are requested.
====--> Hither
Yon <--====
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
Attachment:
pgpdGDvB7z3XE.pgp
Description: PGP signature