[Freedos-user] NFS-booting FreeDOS?

[Ivan S. <one...@gm...>]

>>>>> Rugxulo  <ru...@gm...> writes:
>>>>> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:

[…]

 > BTW, what host OS are you planning to use QEMU?  IIRC, most
 > development is targeted towards Linux.  But our own Bernd often tries
 > to use it atop Windows.  The latest Win32 (unofficial) build I can
 > find (1.1.1-1) is here, though I haven't tested it:

 > http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/

	I'm not that interested in W32, but here's the plan:

	• the FreeDOS 1.0 “Live” image is, in fact, two images: one that
	  gets booted by MEMDISK and contains the necessary software to
	  access CD, and the CD image itself;

	• replacing the CD driver with an XFS one, I'd be able to use an
	  NFS server instead of a CD image;

	• the NFS shared (read-only) directory may be hosted on either a
	  private or public NFS server;

	• assuming that there's such a public NFS server, and also an
	  HTTP one to host a few KiB's iPXE script, the whole matter of
	  booting FreeDOS boils down to, say:

$ qemu \
      -kernel ne2k_pci.lkrn \
      -net nic,model=ne2k_pci \
      -net user,bootfile=http://192.0.2.34/diskless/ipxe/world-default 

	In the example above, ns8390.lkrn is a version of iPXE for
	NE2000 PCI, compiled as a zImage (should there be virtio driver
	for FreeDOS, that'd be virtio-net.lkrn and model=virtio,
	respectively), and it's the /only/ file (beyond QEMU itself, and
	perhaps a script containing the command line above) that has to
	be loaded to access FreeDOS (and not only FreeDOS, check, e. g.,
	[1]) this way!

	Hopefully, this would work on all systems able to run QEMU.

[1] news:868...@gr...
    http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.cpm/msg/ff454d8479391542

 >> • I've seen mentions of XFS — a (free software?) DOS NFS client;
 >> where could it be obtained from?

 > Never heard of it, but I'm far from network savvy.  A quick search
 > shows these sites:

[…]

 > http://www.mmnt.net/db/0/0/hope.eunet.lv/pub/msdos/nfs
 > http://fossies.org/windows/misc/dos/old/

	ACK, thanks!  I've also found the following one:

http://files.chatnfiles.com/Power-Dos-96/network/tcpip/general/

	I'm yet to check whether it works or not.

[…]

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