Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 18:57:13 -0500 (EST) From: ADRIAN Filipi-Martin <adrian@ubergeeks.com> To: Jordan Hayes <jordan@Thinkbank.COM> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stand-alone diskless system ... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981101184707.15138B-100000@lorax.ubergeeks.com> In-Reply-To: <9811012239.AA03494@blood.Thinkbank.COM>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 1 Nov 1998, Jordan Hayes wrote: > Hi, > > I'm looking for any experiences that people here have had with truely > diskless machines: not booting over the network, but from say flash > memory or even a disk that is subsequently powered off. The goal is > quiet operation and low-heat generation. The machine will not be > saving any "interesting" data, so total loss on power-outtage is fine. > > I'm not on this list, so please direct responses to me. I'll summarize > is necessary. > > Thanks, > > /jordan It works really well. A week ago I helped some undergrads run an ACM programming contest. Since we weren't allowed to convert a dozen of the public access NT boxes to unix machines (aw shucks ;-), I brought in our own server, and made a DOS boot floppy using the stuff in /sys/i386/boo/biosboot. We booted these machines completely diskless with kernels stripped down to only network and console IO drivers. This added to running everything addressed in 10.x.x.x made for a pretty nice and limiting contest envrioment. We ran X and everything else you would want, and saw no performance problems. Adding a new machine was as simple as adding an entry to bootptab and making a private area to mount the volatile filesytems from, e.g. /var and /tmp. Check out the FreeBSD web pages. There is a little in the handbook, a little more in the tutorials section and I even found a page on NetBSD's site illuminating. It should be enough to figure it out. That's what I had to do for the contest. If you run into any specific problems, you could e-mail me, or maybe people on the questions list instead of the hackers list. When I get a break, I may submit my notes to the handbook or FAQ, but not just yet. Adrian -- [ adrian@ubergeeks.com -- Ubergeeks Consulting -- http://www.ubergeeks.com/ ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.96.981101184707.15138B-100000>