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Date:      Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:50:43 -0500
From:      Joshua Coombs <jcoombs@gwi.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Netbooting via USB
Message-ID:  <20011212165043.A11003@dargo.gwi.net>

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I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of a small net appliance rig that I
hope to run FreeBSD on in a diskless environment.  The difficult part of
the equation is going to be firing up FreeBSD.  The unit has one compact
flash slot, and 4 usb ports, no pcmcia, no ide, etc.

I can't use etherboot directly as I'm restricted to USB ethernet.

Is it possible to compile a kernel that's capable of initializing the
USB ethernet and NFS to the point that it can then nfs it's root and
other filesystems, and either use a dos bootloader (ala dosboot.com with
netbsd) or the more traditional FBSD bootloader and get up and running
that way?  (I guess it comes down to can the kernel initialize and fire
up a USB ethernet adapter on it's own, or does it need usbd to do that
post kernel load.)

I'd really prefer to not have to get a 64MB or 128MB CF with a stripped
install on it, as I don't want FBSD to ever write to the CF, and I'm
cheap.

So, is this possible with a 16MB CF?

Joshua Coombs

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