From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Dec 19 12:31:19 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id MAA09780 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 19 Dec 1996 12:31:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from labinfo.iet.unipi.it (labinfo.iet.unipi.it [131.114.9.5]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id MAA09769 for ; Thu, 19 Dec 1996 12:31:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (luigi@localhost) by labinfo.iet.unipi.it (8.6.5/8.6.5) id UAA10543; Thu, 19 Dec 1996 20:49:57 +0100 From: Luigi Rizzo Message-Id: <199612191949.UAA10543@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Subject: Re: Can FreeBSD used to boot off Win95 running on diskless workstation ? To: mfwong@mol.net.my (Mun Fai WONG) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 20:49:57 +0100 (MET) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <32ba75471954002@molhub.mol.net.my> from "Mun Fai WONG" at Dec 20, 96 03:15:01 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I learnt that FreeBSD can be set up to be diskless client. However, I wonder > if anyone > know if one can use FreeBSD as the boot server and run netboot.com or > netboot.rom > equivalent for Win95 ? I guess this question can be generalized to other OS > as well. I have gone through this, and after much work, reading books and browsing on the network was unable to make Win95 work decently in a diskless configuration without using IPX. What we managed to do was a "minimal" image which would contain the files needed for Win95 to boot and see the network (and a zillion of other probably useless files that we were unable to dispose). This image is a ~15MB ZIP archive. We boot FreeBSD, run a special /etc/rc which uses fdisk&mtools to cleanup the HD, make a bootable MSDOS partition, copy this archive to the disk, then reboots this time from the disk; the ZIP archive is exploded, and a third reboot makes your machine work. You could probably save the second reboot if there were a working vfatfs (or a version of mtools supporting recursive copy). Totally unsatisfactory. As for the generalization to other OSs: if your OS requires loading a thousand files before your network of choice (IP in our case) is in a usable state, you're out of luck. With MSDOS some netboot equivalents that I know of download an image of a floppy which contains all the files you need. Luigi -----------------------------+-------------------------------------- Luigi Rizzo | Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione email: luigi@iet.unipi.it | Universita' di Pisa tel: +39-50-568533 | via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy) fax: +39-50-568522 | http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ _____________________________|______________________________________