RH8 - Client boot disk

[IceThor]

Hello - I've been learning Linux for a while now, but I can't find any information on this subject... an answer to my question or a push in the right direction would be much appreciated!

I'm trying to make a boot disk (or a boot CD) so that a user without Linux installed can log in to my computer via LAN and use the terminal.

I have user accounts made, a DHCP server pumping out IPs, and I've been setting up shares and a tftp server, but I need to know how to get information on a disk that will tell the client, "Hey, take an IP and log in here." Sort of like the install CD minus the whole install.

Alright! That's that! Thanks for any help, and if I should supply any more information, just say so.

 

[danielhozac]

Are the machines diskless and you want everything on a floppy/CD-ROM? Then you could create a boot disk which mounts a RAM disk image which contains the files you need (like init, a client for connecting (SSH or telnet) and DHCP clients). //Daniel

 

[RhythmAce]

To make a boot disk, type 'mkbootdisk' at the command line. Your users shouldn't have to load linux to communicate with your linux box though.

 

[IceThor]

Daniel, technically the machines aren't diskless -- they have hard drives with Windows installed, but I don't want to uninstall anything; I'd like to just not use the hard drive and have clients log in to my server and use the command line for some testing purposes.

So my goal is to have computers connect to my server and have the server do all the processing and store all the information.

Thanks.

-Trevor

 

[RhythmAce]

You could use a telnet/ssh server which comes packaged with most linux distros. All windows machines should have a command line version of the telnet client.

 

[flugh]

Have you looked at something like Knoppix <

http://www.knoppix.com>?

It's a 'live' CD, just put it in, but from the CD, and you have a full running Linux system <Debian based if it matters to anyone>. It seems you are trying to achieve something like a dumb terminal? Maybe Knoppix is too much. I don't know if any of the floppy based Linux distros would be of use to you (mainly router, firewall, or embedded setups). --
JR

 

[IceThor]

Yeah -- a dumb terminal! That's it! I read through my other posts and notice I forgot to throw in that keyword. I basically want to set up what would seem to be a Ye Olde Unix network, only with Linux.

I'm currently downloading Knoppix, though as I read up on it it does seem to be quite an overkill.

But I'll also set up a telnet server and see how much I can achieve that way.

 

[IceThor]

RhythmAce -- the telnet server worked. Thanks for that!

However, I'd like to work it down to making boot disks for dumb terminals on a LAN. Meaning no Windows telnet.

 

[Morsing]

There is a Howto on your system. I actually think it's in the kernel Documentation.

Basically there are three steps:

1) Make a kernel with bootp (or DHCP) and nfs-root enabled.

2) Make a special device called /dev/nfs with 'mknod c 0 255 /dev/nfs'

3) 'rdev /path/to/kernel /dev/nfs' (or the other way around, can't remember)

Last thing to do is to 'cp /path/to/kernel /dev/fd0'
That takes care of the client side.

On the serevr side it sounds like you've done most of the stuff needed. How did you create the clients root filesystem?? Did you remember device files and costumised /etc files??

On a side note I've used this setup for six years but a few months ago I wanted to do this on a friends computer. It didn't work. The bootp request never kicked in for some reason.
I tried a 2.2, 2.4 and last a 2.0 kernel with no luck. If you have this same problem, let me know.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support