Diskless Nodes HOW-TO Document for Linux Diskless Nodes HOW-TO Document for Linux Table of Contents Diskless Nodes HOW-TO Document for Linux
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Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux Table of Contents Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux................................................................................................1 Robert Nemkin [email protected] , Al Dev (Alavoor Vasudevan) - Maintainer of this HOWTO alavoor[AT]yahoo.com , Markus Gutschke [email protected] , Ken Yap [email protected] , Gero Kuhlmann gero@gkminix.han.de...................................................................1 1. What is this all about?..........................................................................................................................1 2. Advantages of Diskless Computer.......................................................................................................2 3. Diskless with "Live Linux CDROM".................................................................................................3 3.1 Build a Live Linux CDROM.............................................................................................................4 4. Buying is Cheaper Than Building!......................................................................................................7 5. Internet Cafe and Financial Banking with "Diskless Linux"..............................................................8 5.1 Setup IP Masquerading, IP Netfilter and Squid.................................................................................8 6. Diskless Computer for Microsoft Windows 95/NT !!.........................................................................9 6.1 VMWare package..............................................................................................................................9 6.2 Plex86 package..................................................................................................................................9 6.3 VNC package from AT and T............................................................................................................9 7. Quick Steps to implement Diskless Nodes........................................................................................10 7.1 Linux Terminal Server Project - LTSP............................................................................................10 8. EEPROMs or Flash ROMs?.............................................................................................................10 9. Building EEPROM Burner...............................................................................................................11 9.1 What is this ?....................................................................................................................................11 9.2 Supported EEPROMs......................................................................................................................11 9.3 Schematics and pinouts....................................................................................................................11 9.4 Construction.....................................................................................................................................12 9.5 Jumper setup....................................................................................................................................12 9.6 Low-justification of 24-pin EEPROM devices................................................................................12 9.7 Parts List..........................................................................................................................................12 9.8 If you have already built EEP-0.1....................................................................................................12 9.9 How to build the software................................................................................................................13 9.10 Usage..............................................................................................................................................13 9.11 Schematic Diagram in ASCII........................................................................................................14 10. EPROM Burners and Memory chips...............................................................................................15 10.1 Non-Volatile Memory chips..........................................................................................................15 10.2 List of EEPROM Burner manufacturers.......................................................................................16 11. Introduction to Network Booting and Etherboot.............................................................................17 11.1 What is Network booting?.............................................................................................................17 11.2 How does it work...........................................................................................................................17 11.3 Netbooting in Practice....................................................................................................................19 Bootp...............................................................................................................................................19 Tftp..................................................................................................................................................21 NFS root filesystem.........................................................................................................................21 Burn EPROM..................................................................................................................................22 11.4 Uses of Network booting...............................................................................................................22 11.5 For more information.....................................................................................................................22 12. Redhat Linux configuration.............................................................................................................23 12.1 X-terminal......................................................................................................................................25 13. LanWorks BootWare PROMs........................................................................................................25 14. Etherboot..........................................................................................................................................25 15. Netboot.............................................................................................................................................26 i Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux Table of Contents Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux 15.1 Introduction....................................................................................................................................26 15.2 Mailing list.....................................................................................................................................26 15.3 Netboot useful links.......................................................................................................................26 16. Related URLs...................................................................................................................................27 17. Copyright Notice..............................................................................................................................27 18. Other Formats of this Document......................................................................................................27 18.1 Acrobat PDF format......................................................................................................................28 18.2 Convert Linuxdoc to Docbook format..........................................................................................28 18.3 Convert to MS WinHelp format...................................................................................................29 18.4 Reading various formats...............................................................................................................29 19. Topics for Academics and Universities..........................................................................................30 ii Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux Robert Nemkin [email protected] , Al Dev (Alavoor Vasudevan) - Maintainer of this HOWTO alavoor[AT]yahoo.com , Markus Gutschke [email protected] , Ken Yap [email protected] , Gero Kuhlmann [email protected] v22.7, 23 May 2002 This document describes how to set up a diskless Linux box. As technology is advancing rapidly, network-cards are becoming cheaper and much faster - 100 MBits ethernet is standard now and in about 1 to 2 years 1000 MBits i.e. 1GigBits ethernet cards will become an industry standard. With high-speed network cards, remote access will become as fast as the local disk access which will make diskless nodes a viable alternative to workstations in local LAN. Also diskless nodes eliminates the cost of software upgrades and system administration costs like backup, recovery which will be centralized on the server side. Diskless nodes also enable "sharing/optimization" of centralized server CPU, memory, hard-disk, tape and cdrom resources. Diskless nodes provides mobility for the users i.e., users can log on from any one of diskless nodes and are not tied to one workstation.