Re: [Etherboot-users] Diskless setup booting up to Windows

[Anselm M. H. <an...@ho...>]

Am Dienstag, den 26.07.2005, 00:52 -0400 schrieb Belmin (Pub):
> Reply to "Sune Marcher" (7/25/05 8:35p):
> 
> >Which version of windows do you plan on booting? 
> >
> Windows 9x. Have you (or anyone) seen it done? Any documentation on 
> attempts?

I've done it myself. Yes it's absolutely possible.

The basic boot procedure includes loading a hard disk image over the
network, mount it as ramdrive and boot windows from it.
You need a workstation with 256MB RAM for reasonable working.

The downside of the method is that on any bootup, a rather large disk
image (which you probably will not get below 80 MB) has to be loaded -
that draws a lot of network bandwidth, and experience shows that
etherboot and tftp can not do better than something like 5 MB/sec (on a
Gigabit link). So you should investigate multicast techniques (well they
are already in etherboot, but you should try them for performance).

The nice thing is that every boot, you get the exactly same environment
back. You could probably have programs installed on a (lateron) readonly
samba share, and user data on a r/w samba share, but the basic operating
system is always the same.

> >Your best bet is probably to set up a Terminal Server (expensive
> >hardware, expensive client licenses), and etherboot a linux image
> >with a RDP client.

That would be easy, yes.

> I'm thinking of just giving up and actually just using LTSP if this 
> can't be done without the expense of a Windows TS server. I've heard of 
> companies successfully doing this from other administrators but nobody 
> seems to have the details :-/. Maybe the speed issue you mentioned 
> though with the hd running in compatibility mode might not even make it 
> worth the effort.

Once the image is loaded, the time between the "Starting Winblows 98..."
message in text mode and the ready-booted graphic screen averages 5
seconds in my test setup. Hard drive speed is no issue on a ram drive,
wether compatibility mode or not.

What exactly do you think you need that Windows for? For administrative
reasons, "good style points" etc ;-) LTSP is probably way advanced. If
there's no good reason for Windows, go LTSP.

btw. if you have specific questions about setting up Win Diskless, feel
free to ask.

Anselm