on Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 11:47:09PM -0500, will trillich ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Point me to the faq -- i don't know where to look for it or what > it might be named... > > Objective: to create a bootable CD for a Debian network > hub-like system that'll have NO hard drive (and probably no > keyboard or monitor, either). booting from rad-only media > assures simplicity of recovery in case anything gets borked > (black hats, misfortune, unintentional changes). > > I'm setting up a debian/potato install to fit on a CD rom that > i'd like to have as bootable -- in that i'd like to use the CD > rom as the SOLE non-network device on a no-disk server.
> I.e. old pentium box with a cd rom and floppy drive (for variable > settings) but no hard drive, eventually. Couple of points. - You're probably interested in the BootDisk HOWTO http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/ - There are also HOWTOs covering diskless workstations and such. I believe it's possible to get x86 hardware to boot and find a kernel via BIOS-activated networking. http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO/ - Disk is cheap. Bandwidth still sucks. System and distro maintenance are both time-consuming and expensive. The ideal "diskless" client isn't truely diskless, but transparently caches a configuration driven by a configuration served over the network. System data are backed off to network, user data are similarly cached locally only until they can be archived to network. A dream to date, but a pleasant one. - On the Debian side, there's a boot floppies package somewhere, I think, but I can't find it right now. > Of course, to get there, i'm installing and testing and tweaking > on a hard drive. But the end result should be a bootable CD that > doesn't need a hard drive at all. > > I can partition my current drive with a 600mb partition which > would fit on a CD, and get it working -- on hard disk, anyway -- > and create an ISO image (mkisofs i presume?) But there's so > much writing to /var and /tmp by ordinary procedures that i > wonder if a read-only boot can work at all! Is there some way to > make a ram disk (as i think the debian rescue/install CD does) > during boot-up from such a CD rom? You'll almost certainly need *some* local storage, even if proxied through a RAMdisk. Note that /var content will tend to need to be stored. > and then, once i have an ISO image, can i ftp that to a win or > mac box to burn the cd? i haven't got a burner for my debian > monster yet... :( Yes. > so, regarding all these points: > - what's it take to create a cd image > - that's bootable > - from a working hard-drive based system > - that'll peel off into ramdisk for /var & /tmp writing > - and that will be able to read (settings) from /dev/fd0 > - perhaps logging remotely, based on those settings Peek at the LinuxCare BBC data and Seth Shoen's work for more info. > i ask: > > how? <-- such a little question, needing such a big answer :) How much? > pointers hither and yon are requested. ====--> Hither Yon <--==== -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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