Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 17:07:30 -0700 (PDT) From: John Utz <spaz@u.washington.edu> To: Guido van Rooij <guido@gvr.win.tue.nl> Cc: FreeBSD-hackers <FreeBSD-hackers@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: netbooting from dos Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.95.961024163337.28146A-100000@becker1.u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <199610242239.AAA03809@gvr.win.tue.nl>
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Hello Guido; Here is what i am doing, while it is not exactly what you are asking, it might suffice.... On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, Guido van Rooij wrote: > I wonder if it is possible with the current software to have a system > booting freebsd from the network by invoking some dos program. > I want to have a system usually running dos but occasionally I also > want to boot FreeBSD with it. I don;t have the diskspace to install > it locally. I do have very little to install a minimal filesystem. > Btw: It would suffice to just use it as an X server. What i have is a fake network with three nodes. Two nodes are "seats" with monitors and keyboards and such. The server has about .75G of diskspace ( and no monitor or keyboard ). The seats have 160M and 120M, respectively. The diskspace on these seats is partitioned with 70m dedicated to freebsd. The dos partitions on each seat are differently sized because the larger disk is on the same seat as the cdrom, and all the groovy multimedia support apps like quicktime and video for windows *insist* on being installed in the C:\windows directory. The server runs freebsd and has a dos partition on it whose sole purpose is to be exported to the seats via samba. This allows me to only install diskhogs like matlab and visual C++ only once. So the non-cdrom seat only has wfw/tcp-ip and dos6.2 installed on it. This takes about 50 megs with *generous* (30M?) swap space. All of the dos/win apps run just fine. The freebsd partition has only the "minimal" install set installed on it and a 25-30M swap partition. However, there is probably alot of stuff that could get blown off the minimal install list because i am mounting /usr from the server,which is where all of the X stuff is located. I doubt that this is really what you had in mind, but i thought i might offer it as a plausible alternative. It offers the advantage of making the seat only responsible for running X and leaving the actual applications to the server's cpu budget ( i use 386/387 33's with 6-8 meg of ram as seats and *server* ) and makes administration ( both dos and freebsd ) much simpler. I can also use the cdrom on the downstairs machine as a resource on the upstairs machine, which is pretty cool( but only under wfw, because it is an atapi cdrom ). At the least, if u want to run freebsd, u will need to create a partition on the hard drive, i dont see any way of getting 'round that. Cant think of any dos-based miracle that will allow this to work otherwise. > > -Guido > hope this helps. i know it has vastly enhanced domestic bliss on the computer front...my wife insists on windows, i insist on freebsd, we both get our way...where-ever we choose to sit! Oh, and if u decide to go this route. use 2.1.5-RELEASE, not the snapshots. I have not isolated the problem to either XFree or FreeBSD, but the latest version of XF86 and the 961006 SNAP conspire to make X die when some applications loose the mouse. I know this all worked fine on 2.1.5-RELEASE. ******************************************************************************* John Utz spaz@u.washington.edu idiocy is the impulse function in the convolution of life
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