I have been working with SYSLINUX/PXELINUX Mostly v.2.x recently v3.0 &v3.1
to remote-boot IBM PC's off of 1.44Floppy Images with great success. I have
searched through several distributions and the SYSLINUX package seems to be by
far the easiest to work with.. (thanks)
My question would be: Is it possible to boot a diskless client PC with
Complete hard disk images? or even better hard disk contents mounted on the
server?
I am currently running an HP LC2000/r server (2 x 1GHz CPU's, 512RAM, 6 x
9GB SCSI drives) with Red Hats standard V9 distribution.
This 1 box is running DHCP (ISC v.3) And TFTP (v.?).
This has served me well with PXELINUX booting floppy images.
The clients I generally run range from IBM 1.8GHz Netvista's ,2.8GHz
ThinkCentre's & The IBM Thinkpad T2x Series. All of these CPU's
have the On-Board Intel 10/100 Eternet. The standard RAM is 512MB however
depending on the machine are capable of 1.5Gig. Most of the work I do is
running the 100's of Floppy images I have for diagnostic purposes.
This is awesome and incredibly faster than loading from floppies as I am sure
you know.. What I would like to do is build a CPU with WinXP Then remove the
Hard drive from the client. Take the contents of the Hard disk and place them
on the server. In essence I am looking to have 3 or 4 different boot options
with the same box that has no permanent storage inside.
Is this possible with the SYSLINUX package? any suggestions?
note: The network I have set up has no Firewall of any kind or any security
concerns.
Thanks, Joe...
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello... myfj1200 at netzero.com wrote: [...]> My question would be: Is it possible to boot a diskless client PC > with Complete hard disk images? or even better hard disk contents > mounted on the server? >That depends. Generally: Yes, Memdisk can emulate Harddisk Images from Ram. (AFAIK) Not from Network.> [...] What I would like to do is build a CPU with WinXP Then remove > the Hard drive from the client. Take the contents of the Hard disk > and place them on the server. In essence I am looking to have 3 or 4 > different boot options with the same box that has no permanent > storage inside. Is this possible with the SYSLINUX package? any > suggestions?That won't work with the Syslinux package (alone) because of the way Windows XP accesses Harddisks. You'd need to do a Windows XP Hard Disk Device driver that is compatible with Memdisk - but such thing doesn't exist as of now (also AFAIK). There are, however commercial solutions that will provide "Harddisk on Net"-Kind of Configurations. (I have seen them, but have to dig them up, if you're interested)... bye Christian -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFB5OPQ2gF1h3CVOsMRAiz1AKCjVq1tGhXozfVFGHdaMZ1KgcLpgQCeOQyM c3O8tLoBiIEvwmRJCxBPupw=t8xG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
myfj1200 at netzero.com wrote: [...]> My question would be: Is it possible to boot a diskless client PC > with Complete hard disk images? or even better hard disk contents > mounted on the server? >That depends. Generally: Yes, Memdisk can emulate Harddisk Images from Ram. (AFAIK) Not from Network. I have attempted this with smaller MS loads 100-500MB Fat16/32 Dos/Win9x Builds with no luck. It runs through the whole boot process up to the infamous "dots" it will blow about 1 page of dots on the screen until all network traffic stops as do the dots across the screen...Is this a likely RAM issue or am I just creating the image wrong? I have been using syntax like : dd if=/hard disk mount of=disk.img I have used several different variations of this, Is this proper? I have completly phased out all MS server products from my network however this doesn't mean I'm that "good" at Linux just that "Confident" :) Thanks, JOe... ______________________________________________________________________ Speed up your surfing with NetZero HiSpeed. Now includes pop-up blocker! Only $14.95/month -visit http://www.netzero.com/surf to sign up today!
>>> My question would be: Is it possible to boot a diskless client PC >>> with Complete hard disk images? or even better hard disk >>> contents mounted on the server? > >> That depends. Generally: Yes, Memdisk can emulate Harddisk Images >> from Ram. (AFAIK) Not from Network. > > I have attempted this with smaller MS loads 100-500MB Fat16/32 > Dos/Win9x Builds with no luck. It runs through the whole boot > process up to the infamous "dots" it will blow about 1 page ofdots> on the screen until all network traffic stops as do the dots across > the screen...So far so good.> Is this a likely RAM issue or am I just creating the image wrong?Most likely creating the image wrong. Of course you should have enough memory for the image to fit in... I've booted successfully booted 200MB DOS images via PXELinux. (I didn't create them from a physical Hard Drive but by "dd if=/dev/zero of=disk.img bs=512 count=x".) ??Out of curiosity how else would you make a 200MB hard disk image? For trying it out, you might want to use Syslinux load the Image into RAM from a local Harddrive (to speed up trying). It can start memdisk the same way as PXELINUX does... ??note: I don't know how to do this. ??Would this be with a Linux recovery disk boot?> I have been using syntax like : dd if=/hard disk mount of=disk.imgIf you use dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/user/disk.img it should work - if /dev/hda is the Harddisk you want to Image. The Disk Image has to contain the MBR with partition table and the partition itself (/dev/hda1 wouldn't work, since its just the partition) Maybe you need to supply Memdisk with the right Drive geometry for the Disk(Image)... bye Christian ?? ok..I've been working with this for a few days and still have yet to nail this one... The server still seems to be working properly booting with PXELINUX v3.01 (also tested with 3.07 on a test box). I took this one step further and after much hunting was able to locate a functional 100MB hard-disk with the specs listed(1024/17/12). In order to keep this simple for diagnostic purposes I used a Windows 98 EBD to make the whole 100MB drive 1 Fat16 partition (also tried fat32) Formatted this with the /S (system disk) command then proceeded to copy the basic utils and about 60MB of fluff. This drive locally in a CPU boots normally to a C:> prompt. I then from lack of knowing a better way took the 100MB drive out and stuck in in on the second hard disk cable in place of the CD-ROM on a box running RH Linux V9 Kernel V2.4 as a Workstation... In a Terminal window then proceeded to type: dd if=/dev/hdc of=/tftpboot/full.img dd if=/dev/hdc of=/tftpboot/full.img bs=512 and many varieties of this. using the boot options Kernel memdisk initrd=full.img It will still give me about 3/4 a screen of dots along with all the boot time specs which lists the Drive geometry properly then it comes up with a Disk I/O error Insert another disk message. (not verbatim) I've read every document I could find in regards to SYSLINUX and it's derivitives to no avail... Any more suggestions? Thanks again, Joe... ______________________________________________________________________ Speed up your surfing with NetZero HiSpeed. Now includes pop-up blocker! Only $14.95/month -visit http://www.netzero.com/surf to sign up today!