Hi there, we are using a couple of Diskless Linux Workstations in conjunction with PXE capabable Network cards to boot the system. This works fine using pxelinux. However, there are a few workstations left, which are not able to boot via PXE and thus this workstations need a Kernel on a floppy disk and an additional initrd image. The Problem with is, that both of them don't fit on a floppy disk. We used to use netboot for this purpose, but there seems to be no way to set up netboot in a way that one can use a somewhat big initrd file. Thanks for hints Sven -- /* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */ (David S. Miller in /usr/src/linux/arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c) /me is giggls at ircnet, http://geggus.net/sven/ on the Web
Sven Geggus wrote:> Hi there, > > we are using a couple of Diskless Linux Workstations in conjunction with PXE > capabable Network cards to boot the system. This works fine using pxelinux. > However, there are a few workstations left, which are not able to boot via > PXE and thus this workstations need a Kernel on a floppy disk and an > additional initrd image. > > The Problem with is, that both of them don't fit on a floppy disk. > > We used to use netboot for this purpose, but there seems to be no way to > set up netboot in a way that one can use a somewhat big initrd file. >PXELINUX requires PXE. It can't function without it. I would really love to see an open source *PXE* stack that could be burned into ROM or booted from a floppy, and although there has been some work on it (http://www.nilo.org/) I don't think it's practically usable. -hpa
> we are using a couple of Diskless Linux Workstations in conjunction with PXE > capabable Network cards to boot the system. This works fine using pxelinux. > However, there are a few workstations left, which are not able to boot via > PXE and thus this workstations need a Kernel on a floppy disk and an > additional initrd image.Etherboot can be booted from floppy (or rom if you hardware/BIOS permit) or chained from PXE. See www.rom-o-matic.com for details. Have you looked at www.ltsp.com?
Peter Lister wrote:>>we are using a couple of Diskless Linux Workstations in conjunction with PXE >>capabable Network cards to boot the system. This works fine using pxelinux. >>However, there are a few workstations left, which are not able to boot via >>PXE and thus this workstations need a Kernel on a floppy disk and an >>additional initrd image. > > Etherboot can be booted from floppy (or rom if you hardware/BIOS permit) > or chained from PXE. See www.rom-o-matic.com for details. Have you > looked at www.ltsp.com? >This is, however, a different and incompatible solution. -hpa