From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Dec 12 13:50:55 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dargo.gwi.net (dargo.gwi.net [207.5.142.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5750D37B405 for ; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 13:50:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 19009 invoked by uid 117); 12 Dec 2001 21:50:43 -0000 Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:50:43 -0500 From: Joshua Coombs To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Netbooting via USB Message-ID: <20011212165043.A11003@dargo.gwi.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message