[Etherboot-developers] Re: Etherboot in Linux Journal publications

[Richard C F. <rc...@us...>]

Marty, everyone,
      I wrote the article in LinuxJournal regarding booting linux remotely.
I didn't mean to mis-represent etherboot in any way -- in fact I am an avid
etherboot user.  Since I work on commodity clusters, I don't use the
ability to write etherboot to BIOS -- in our clusters we use either
etherboot from diskette or PXE.

       I don't know if you're aware of some of the ways we've used
etherboot... When I first wrote LUI, the Linux Utility for cluster Install,
2 years ago (oss.software.ibm.com/lui) it supported both etherboot and pxe
style booting.  LUI was picked up as the cluster installation method for
OSCAR (www.sourceforge.net/projects/oscar).  OSCAR is an open source
cluster solution for High Performance Computing -- it's been downloaded
over 16,000 times.  The top 500 clusters web site recently did a survey (
http://clusters.top500.org/pollbooth.php?qid=clustersys and OSCAR came in
third among open source clustering solutions. However, MSC.Linux picked up
OSCAR as their High Performance Computing solution, and as such MSC and
OSCAR combined scored 29 percent and would be in first place.  Judging from
the mailing lists for oscar, I'd say about half our users use straight PXE,
and the other half use etherboot.  So, maybe you didn't realize it, but
etherboot has had a significant impact on high performance computing
clusters.  In fact, OSCAR was picked up by NCSA as the basis for their
grid-in-a-box, cluster-in-a-box and display-wall-in-a-box initiatives.

      Well, I just wanted to give credit where due... thanks for all your
hard work and running a great project (LTSP too!)...

happy holidays, Rich

Richard Ferri
IBM Linux Technology Center
rc...@us...
845.433.7920


Marty Connor <md...@th...> on 12/21/2001 07:59:02 AM

To:    "Etherboot Developers" <eth...@li...>,
       "Etherboot Users" <eth...@li...>
cc:
Subject:    Etherboot in Linux Journal publications



There is an article in the January 2002 Linux Journal on "The Basics of
Booting Linux Remotely" which mentions Etherboot.  They didn't quite seem
to realize that Etherboot creates code that can be burned into ROM or
flashed into BIOS, but seemed to think that it can only be run from a
floppy and if you want a ROM you have to buy a PXE-enabled card.  Oh
well, at least we're positively mentioned, and more people will visit the
web page and find us and LTSP and realize all the capabilities that we
are offering.

There was also a nice article in the September/October 2001 (issue 5)
Embedded Linux Journal called "Booting from the Ether" by Jay Sissom.  He
talks about booting the ThinkNIC by burning your own CDROM and using
Etherboot as well as other methods.

I'm pretty sure people are reading these articles because when they are
released I get a pretty good spike on rom-o-matic.net :)

Anyway, it's nice to be mentioned, and hopefully people will use and
enjoy (and help improve) our free software and free services.

Marty

---
    Try: http://rom-o-matic.net/ to make Etherboot images instantly.

   Name: Marty Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827; Cambridge, MA 02139; USA
  Voice: (617) 491-6935, Fax: (617) 491-7046
  Email: md...@th...
    Web: http://www.thinguin.org/