Diskless Boot
Giles Coochey
I had an idea....
RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
from, ususally, a Netware server.
usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
Does anybody want to try putting support for RPL into the Linux Kernel?
My vision is that this would be a way of making PCs into great (and very
cheap!) X-Terminals.
Comments are greatly appreciated.
--
KYE Systems UK Ltd
http://www.geniusnet.com.tw
http://www.genius-kye.com
http://www.genius.kye.de
Justin Clancy
Funny you should say that. Look at the thread in this newsgroup about
my problems with cloning. The solution would be much the same (except I
want to boot from a single floppy).
--
Justin Clancy - Managing Director.
The Clan Partnership Ltd.
Tel: 01202 533123 Fax: 01202 257989 email: jus...@hippos.demon.co.uk
"Divide by banana error: Reload universe and reboot"
Christopher Browne
On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 13:09:01 +0100, Justin Clancy
<jus...@hippos.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Giles Coochey wrote:
>>
>> I had an idea....
>>
>> RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
>> from, ususally, a Netware server.
>> usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
>> Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
>> just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
>> I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
>> thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
>>
>> Does anybody want to try putting support for RPL into the Linux Kernel?
>> My vision is that this would be a way of making PCs into great (and very
>> cheap!) X-Terminals.
>> Comments are greatly appreciated.
>Funny you should say that. Look at the thread in this newsgroup about
>my problems with cloning. The solution would be much the same (except I
>want to boot from a single floppy).
>"Divide by banana error: Reload universe and reboot"
Putting the ability into the kernel is pretty pointless, because you
need some place to load the kernel from if you don't have disk on the
machine.
You might want to take a look at:
<a href="http://www.charm.net/~john/bootrom.html">BootROM</a>
which describes how to get at boot ROMS pluggable into various network
cards to allow a PC to try to boot Linux over a LAN.
--
cbbr...@hex.net, <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne> Q: Where would Microsoft
take you today? A: Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis...
Spam bait: dom...@cyberpromo.com postm...@netvigator.com postm...@onlinebiz.net
pmdat...@aol.com ad...@submitking.com c...@llv.com wa...@pwrnet.com
Mr J Pelan
NB Followups reduced to comp.os.linux.development.system
Giles Coochey (gi...@kye.co.uk) wrote:
: I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
: thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
Given the number of people using Linux in a wide range of
environments it's a bit difficult to believe that no one has
thought about it (at least) and produced a package. In fact there are two
that I know of and their LSM entries follow at the end of this message.
The 'Diskless Linux Mini Howto' (v0.0.3) does actually mention
using a Boot PROM image for a wd8013 card but otherwise it needs
updating and perhaps upgrading to a full Howto.
John P.
--
Begin3
Title: etherboot
Version: 3.0b2
Entered-date: 10FEB97
Description: Source for BOOT-Prom images; the code is based on the
FreeBSD network-bootloader and supports loading of
FreeBSD, Linux or DOS. WD/SMC, NE1000/NE2000, 3COM
3c503 and 3COM 3c509 are supported. There is optional
code for supporting NICs based on Crystal Semiconductor's
CS89x0 chipset.
Keywords: booting, boot-rom, nfs, diskless, tftp, bootp
Author: gut...@math.uni-muenster.de (Markus Gutschke)
k...@syd.dit.csiro.au (Ken Yap)
Maintained-by: k...@syd.dit.csiro.au (Ken Yap) (primary maintainer)
gut...@math.uni-muenster.de (Markus Gutschke)
Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/Linux-boot
450687 etherboot-3.0b2.tar.gz
1406 etherboot-3.0b2.lsm
Alternate-site:
Original-site:
Platforms: An ELF-based GCC is required, EPROM burner recommended
(unless booting from DOS disk). If building the 16 bit
version, bcc from the Linux/16 or Linux/ELKS project is
required. See src-16/README.16 for a more detailed
description of src-16.
Copying-policy: Code by Markus Gutschke and Ken Yap are in the PUBLIC
DOMAIN; but part of the code that this package is based
on is BSD and other parts are GPL; read doc/COPYING for
details!
End
Begin3
Title: netboot-0.5
Version: 0.5
Entered-date: 29 Jan 97
Description: This package allows booting of a diskless computer over a
network and mounting the root filesystem via NFS. It con-
tains the necessary bootrom code and utility program to
convert a Linux kernel or MS-DOS into a netbootable image.
Keywords: booting, boot-rom, root-fs, nfs, diskless, MS-DOS
Author: ge...@gkminix.han.de (Gero Kuhlmann)
Maintained-by: ge...@gkminix.han.de (Gero Kuhlmann)
Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/Linux-boot
313kB netboot-0.5.tar.gz
682 netboot-0.5.lsm
Copying-policy: GPL
End
Ralph Blach
Well the other way to boot is bootp/dhcp. I think these are better ways
to boot, but require
IP support and tftp support. BTW, from personal experience, bootp on
linux works VERY well.
I think all PC companies should put bootp/dhcp support into there
bioses.
Chip
Christopher Browne wrote:
>
> On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 13:09:01 +0100, Justin Clancy
> <jus...@hippos.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Giles Coochey wrote:
> >>
> >> I had an idea....
> >>
> >> RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
> >> from, ususally, a Netware server.
> >> usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
> >> Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
> >> just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
> >> I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
> >> thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
> >>
Jan Pompe
Giles Coochey (gi...@kye.co.uk) wrote:
: I had an idea....
: RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
: from, ususally, a Netware server.
: usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
: Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
: just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
: I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
: thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
: Does anybody want to try putting support for RPL into the Linux Kernel?
You have to boot it first;-)
I can see no reason, if the bios supports a boot ROM, that the ROM can't
be loaded with a Linux (or any other OS for that matter) kernel. The
first prog on the rom would need to be a loader like LILO which
loads the kernel and a kernel hack which will allow it to load a complete
image of the root disk from the ROM. The ROM itself would have to be
rather large.
It's going back a bit but, in the xt days, the bios would check for
a boot ROM and load/run whatever was in there before looking for
disks. I don't know if the bios still does this but I do suspect
that this is the way the network cards do it.
Network cards which support network boots are cheap enough and
since you if you are wanting to use it as an X-terminal you must
be hooking up to a computer which has the needed software and
hardware it seams to me to be the least painful way to go.
--
Jan
Before e-mailing consider how "dialix" is spelt.
Jan Pompe
Justin Clancy (jus...@hippos.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: Giles Coochey wrote:
: >
: > I had an idea....
: >
: > RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
: > from, ususally, a Netware server.
: > usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
: > Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
: > just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
: > I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
: > thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
: >
: > Does anybody want to try putting support for RPL into the Linux Kernel?
: >
: > My vision is that this would be a way of making PCs into great (and very
: > cheap!) X-Terminals.
: >
: > Comments are greatly appreciated.
: > --
: > KYE Systems UK Ltd
: > http://www.geniusnet.com.tw
: > http://www.genius-kye.com
: > http://www.genius.kye.de
: Funny you should say that. Look at the thread in this newsgroup about
: my problems with cloning. The solution would be much the same (except I
: want to boot from a single floppy).
You can I do it all the time - well not all that often - when I do something
stupid like not running lilo after recompiling the kernel.
The boot disk is no longer needed after the kernel is loaded differnent
distributions have different flavours in the exact way this is achieved
but there will be instructions with the distribution.
J Taylor PTT Europe
In article <5vmg6f$16...@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>, j...@rl.ac.uk (Mr J Pelan)
wrote:
> NB Followups reduced to comp.os.linux.development.system
>
OK -
The advantages of RPL support is that many card manufacturers, ourselves
included, only issue boot-roms that work with our own cards and
standard NE*000 boot-roms don't (allowing them to charge the earth)
So if you can only get hold of an RPL boot-rom you're not going to get far
with Linux until RPL is supported.
>
> The 'Diskless Linux Mini Howto' (v0.0.3) does actually mention
> using a Boot PROM image for a wd8013 card but otherwise it needs
> updating and perhaps upgrading to a full Howto.
Any volunteers? (before I take another look at the latest version and see
what I can do myself)
J Taylor PTT Europe
>
> Putting the ability into the kernel is pretty pointless, because you
> need some place to load the kernel from if you don't have disk on the
> machine.
>
Can I ask you a question -
how did you install linux in the first place?
Joost Stegeman
You can burn your own bootrom with the drivers and code from the
etherboot-3_1_tar.gz package or netboot-0_5_3.tar.gz, both available
on your favorite sunsite mirror.
The is even a netboot-floppies-1_1_tar.gz package which contains
bootimages for several cards.
- Joost
Jamie Cameron
: RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
: from, ususally, a Netware server.
: usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
: Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
: just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
: I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
: thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
: Does anybody want to try putting support for RPL into the Linux Kernel?
: My vision is that this would be a way of making PCs into great (and very
: cheap!) X-Terminals.
All the support you need from the kernel is already there. I have a few
machines setup to boot from floppies containing a kernel with support for
the root directory on an NFS server. When booted, the kernel is loaded from
the floppy, and then does RARP requested to find its IP address and the root
NFS server. It then mounts the root directory from something like
server:/tftpboot/1.2.3.4 and then boots in the usual way.
If you have the right kind of ethernet cards, there is a HOWTO that explains
how to do a true diskless boot by reprogramming the EEPROM on the card to
use RARP and TFTP to download the kernel instead of loading it from disk.
I haven't tried this though..
- Jamie
Leo Wouters
In article <01bcc292$1ce64cc0$0200...@giles.test>,
"Giles Coochey" <gi...@kye.co.uk> writes:
> I had an idea....
>
> RPL BootROMS work by intercepting the BIOS and downloading a Boot Image
> from, ususally, a Netware server.
> usually this boot image is a DOS Boot Disk which logs the user into a
> Netware server - loading DOSODI drivers and a VLM client. However, it could
> just as easily be a LILO boot disk with NFS support.
> I have seen the Diskless Boot howto and it seems that nobody has even
> thought about using BootROMS with Linux.
>
> Does anybody want to try putting support for RPL into the Linux Kernel?
>
> My vision is that this would be a way of making PCs into great (and very
> cheap!) X-Terminals.
>
> Comments are greatly appreciated.
> --
> KYE Systems UK Ltd
> http://www.geniusnet.com.tw
> http://www.genius-kye.com
> http://www.genius.kye.de
Hello,
People have thought about this ! Take a look at the netboot package
by Gero Kuhlman.
You can make you own bootroms with support for bootp and tftp.
It can be found in the usual places (eg sunsite and it's mirrors.
Leo
--
Leo Wouters, Eindhoven University of Technology
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Fundamentals
W-hoog -1.138 PO Box 513 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
E-mail: l...@wfw.wtb.tue.nl