Without wishing to be rude, I'll note that there are some mistakes in the previous post (though I concede that some of the points below are differences of opinion). I'd like to correct some of the statements for the benefit of all list members, and suggest that posters consider whether their experience is relevant.
For the record, the Etherboot via PXE support was written by a colleague and integrated by me into the Etherboot source by me. We use Etherboot via PXE, LILO and rom image daily, though not for LTSP. > PXE was designed to ease care and feeding of terminals that boot > remotely. PCs in general, not just terminals (normally thin/dumb clients). And to say that PXE was "designed" might be an overstatement... anyone who has seen my previous traffic on PXE will realise that my Humble Opinion is that PXE is frankly Not Very Good. > My understanding of PXE (and it may be mistaken) is that it's an execution > environment present in ROM on a network card, and that it understands enough > about DHCP and TFTP to download its own PXE-compliant image and run it, and > that all configuration of the PXE bootroms is done by a config file on the > server. In other words, there's no boot prom involved, and no kernel/boot > image is ever stored anywhere on a PXE client. Err - well there IS a boot image - the one that implements PXE. PXE configuration is done by DHCP, not any special file. PXE is not magic, it's just Intel brand of boot firmware. > Thus you don't add it to the bios. The idea is that the vendor supplies you with PXE firmware from the factory. > Although some evidence in support of this understanding may be that > many PXE NICs do not have boot prom sockets. They all have boot roms/proms - the PXE code must reside *somewhere* - but recent nics do not have traditional DIP sockets in the expectation that you physically plug in a chip which has been blown in an external device. Most (though not all) are *flashable*, no unplugging needed. > Thus what you need to do is put your PXE rom image on your SERVER, > and somehow set up that server to respond to requests from PXE > clients by handing them that PXE rom image. The pxe rom image in > turn will be loaded into memory on the client, and then will take > over and start looking for a kernel, like normal. Yes... except that - by definition - it's no longer a rom image if you don't load it from rom. Sorry to be pedantic, but that's why PXE calls it the "Network Bootable Program". And the obvious question here is "why can't it just load the bl**dy kernel?". > However, what you describe might also work (I don't know), but I wouldn't > count on it. Pleas refer to my previous email. > It's much easier to set things up the standard way, anyway. Don't assume that there is a "standard" way: I suppose that LTSP systems will look pretty similar, but rather different to a 1024 node compute cluster. If you have to roll out 200 new terminals in a day, and they all have PXE from the factory, it's easier to chain Etherboot from the PXE firmware. But once you *have* got them all configured, flashing Etherboot from software is quite easy. NB - don't confuse flashing (driven from software) with burning or blowing in an external reader. > Check > http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/pxe/pxe-ltsp-recipe.txt Check http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/pxe.howto.html first. Red Hat's idea of PXE is not ideal, IMHO. LTSP people generally use Etherboot, and Etherboot can be chained from PXE. > It looks like pxe will take a bit of work to set up, but it'll be a > lot less work (and less violent) than reflashing all your bioses! Umm... unless I've missed something, this seems to contradict your previous statement, but the point is valid that different cirumstances favour different solutions: "easy" is very subjective. > I think the whole point of PXE in the first place was to avoid > having to burn EEPROMS for all your network cards (a problem when > you have hundreds of clients) or flash crazy bioses. I won't voice in public my cynical beliefs of why Intel created PXE, but it wasn't for the Good Of Mankind. The fact that many nic vendors support a single net boot environment is good - the fact the environment in question is PXE isn't. ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net
