Re: [Etherboot-developers] Etherboot over wireless

[Michael B. <mb...@fe...>]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> I would like to kwnow in what extent it it is possible to etherboot over a
> wireless card. The boot shall support Orinoco and Prism2 wireless drivers.

At the moment only Prism2 drivers exist in Etherboot.

> Can the boot code be stored in the network card and used for wireless booting.
> Or shall I use a small flash card? I am completely new to etherboot and need
> some help.

I don't know of any wireless network cards that have BootRom sockets.
Using a flash card is one option.  Another, probably cheaper, option is to
buy a cheap wired network card with a BootRom socket and to use a BootRom
containing drivers for both the wired and wireless cards.  We have used
this solution successfully on a moderate scale (120 workstations).

I don't think that the rom-o-matic interface allows you to build
multiple-driver Rom images (although I may be wrong), but it's very easy
to do if you download the Etherboot source code.  For example, if you have
a D-Link DFE-538 (wired) card with BootRom socket and a Prism2.5 PCI
wireless card, then you can build the ROM image with

  make bin32/dfe538--prism2_pci.lzrom

Adjust "dfe538" and "prism2_pci" to fit your particular cards.

Hope that helps,

Michael Brown
http://www.fensystems.co.uk