From owner-freebsd-small Thu Aug 13 10:16:28 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA29888 for freebsd-small-outgoing; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:16:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from antipodes.cdrom.com (castles250.castles.com [208.214.165.250]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA29883 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:16:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@antipodes.cdrom.com) Received: from antipodes.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by antipodes.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA00775; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:14:18 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199808131714.KAA00775@antipodes.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: Luiz de Barros cc: freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: DISKLESS and FLOPPYLESS remote serial boot. In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:43:39 -0300." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:14:17 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Dear All, > > We are planning to install in some of our clients an small router with no > HardDisk. We plan to use PicoBSD but one of our fears is having a floppy > disk inside the disk drive all the time, subject to disk errors, CRC > errors, etc. > > Is it possible to have the following setup? > > One computer with network card, BOOTPROM, no floppy and no Hard Disks. > One serial conection connected to a remote freebsd PPP server. I want to > load a small bootstrap from the PROM and download the FreeBSD boot code > from the serial line ( PPP + TFTP ), the same way it is done with bootp+ > TFTP loading the boot code from the ethernet bus. > > Is it done anywhere? > Is it possible? > Could anybody point me some tips? I don't believe that anyone has a PPP bootrom. I've deployed floppy-based systems in a number of environments, with generally good results. You want to make sure that the drive is sealed to prevent dust problems - I normally just put some masking tape over the front of the drive. If reliability is a really serious issue though, I would suggest that you look at purchasing a flash memory card which emulates a floppy drive at the BIOS level. This has no moving parts, cannot be written to by the operating system, and can be easily upgraded if necessary. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message