RE: Network booting with a disk image ?

[Feng Shuo]

NBD (Network Block Device) on linux can make a remote image file (or
device) as a local block device by TCP. You can use the block device as
the root of your linux system. Just copy 'nbd.o' and 'nbd-client' to
your initrd and edit your linuxrc. GRUB still access the kernel and
initrd by tftp.

My patch on
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?item_id=6690&item_file_id=880
can supports RPC now. But I don't have enough time to provide NFS
support on GRUB :-(.

GRUB can not use NBD directly for it is TCP based :(. An UDP or RPC
version is still under developing in my lab. GRUB may support it, but I
am not very sure whether it is allowed to be released by GPL :'(.

Feng Shuo
-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of
address@hidden
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 11:09 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Network booting with a disk image ?


Hi to everybody,

I'm looking for a way of booting a server/computer with a disk image
(generated for example with "cat /dev/hda > disk-image.img" or "dd
if=/dev/hda of=disk-image.img") stored in a TFTP or NFS server.

The procedure should be somehow like this :

1.- You power on the computer.
2.- Computer sends a dhcp request for obtaining the network config.
3.- Computer connects to tftp or NFS server. It then issues a
command like "cat /nfssharedir/disk-image.img > /dev/hda" or "dd
if=/nfssharedir/disk-image.img of=/dev/hda"
4.- It then continues booting using that image.
5-. You end up with a fresh system 100% identical to the one from
whom you made the image.

Is it possible to do this with GRUB ? Or anyother combination of
tools / methods you may know ?

Thanks in advance, Regards,
Teresa. 



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