RE: Network booting with a disk image ?

[teresita]

Feng,

First of all, thanks for your tips.

>From what you say, I guess NBD will use the image through the
network. But what I want is a replication of the image stored into
the server to the local disk.

That way even if I disconnect the network cable from the
workstation, it will still work because the HD image has been copied
to the local disk, and it's not used directly from the network.

Am I right ?

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 12:06:09 +0800, Feng Shuo wrote
> 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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