DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: PXE booting DSL



I just made some minor modifications to the linuxrc script to incorporate the KNOPPIX-file one th initrd (yes, that's right, a 50MB initrd). This makes for very easy network booting that does not even require an NFS server to mount the KNOPPIX file.

If you want to try it out, take a look here:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/248

And download the files necessary her:

Download directory

Since the changes in the linuxrc are marginal, I suggest including them to upcoming releases. It would help building the PXE version from any new release within five minutes.

It might be possible to use a windows box as boot server, I will figure out the configuration soon.

Regards,
Matt
Sounds like a good idea.

If you can automate this process into a user-friendly script, it would be a great way to build a PXE-DSL.

1) Boot livecd
2) Download script
3) Execute script.
4) Move newly generated file(s) over to PXE server.
Quote (cbagger01 @ Sep. 19 2005,01:09)
Sounds like a good idea.

If you can automate this process into a user-friendly script, it would be a great way to build a PXE-DSL.

I will do this soon. It might require that the bootbox has at least 192MB RAM, but on the other side the changes might be so small that they can be easily integrated in the "standard" DamnSmall distribution.

In the meantime please try the prepared ZIP or tar.gz file with a "normal" (harddisk installed) Linux or even with Windows as a boot box.

Regards,
Mattias
This is a concept that could prove very usefull to me, as i have a P3 that refuses to recognise any IDE devices (most of the time, its really messed...) If I could boot via network then I wouldnt need a HDD right?, the box would also be very quiet without a noisy HDD or CDROM.

What do I need in terms of network hardware to pull this off?, do i need boot roms etc and are they all the same or do i need something specific?

cheers, keep up the good work -this is just one more feature that will distinguish DSL from the others, it would be amazing to see incorporated on the 50mb disk.
Quote (chickenman @ Sep. 20 2005,09:57)
What do I need in terms of network hardware to pull this off?, do i need boot roms etc and are they all the same or do i need something specific?

No, you do not need a boot ROM. You either invest about 15 Euros in a PXE capable network card or you create a Etherboot floppy (this is essentially a minimal OS for initializing the network card and starting the boot process). Rom-o-matic helps:

Rom-o-matic

You might need to change the boot file from "pxelinux.0" to "etherboot.nbi" when using Etherboot instead of PXE.

Regards,
Matt
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