booting off the network

Taurus

hardware monkey
Joined
8 May 2002
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how does one go about setting this up? i know how to change the boot order in the client computer's bios and i already have a folder with boot files and everything on the server. i just need to know how to get it to boot off of that particular folder. thanks!
 
do you mean like a wake on LAN card. or booting off a network server like you would do if you had no computer??
 
no, not wake-on-lan. want the boot dir on one computer and want another computer(s) to be able to boot from that folder.

a lot of laptops and pc's have "lan" as a boot-up option... wondering what it would take to do that. there shouldn't have to be anything on the client's hd since it's a bios option.
 
altho im probably wrong, wouldnt a server OS be needed? like Win2k Server or something? Boot from LAN is more a business thing rather than something you could do at home isnt it??
 
technically speaking all you need is a NIC with lan awake built in and a motherboard that suports it. Included with the NIC card is a wire that connects to the MB. So when ever the computer is either nibernating or even turned off. When the signal is sent to the NIC (via the LAN) the computer will boot or wake up. You can send the signal many ways, its even as easy as opening un network neighborhood and putting in the computers name like \\<computer name> They're instructions on how to do this that comes with the NIC itself.
 
don't think thats what ment...........TechSupport is the closest.......

boot off LAN needs a whole environment setup to support it , a server and all. a common use might be somewhere where you would need security......say a bank or something. you would build a diskless workstation, on boot it would load OS and all into ram and run from there on shutdown all is gone. this way theres no data in workstation that can be stole on a drive. Another use of booting this way you might set it up to load a minimal OS then say a terminal services client (which is a client desktop where all is running on a remote server and all you get/send is keyboard/mouse video signals)
to build a machine to do this otherwise is silly and really a waste as parts a so cheap to put OS local, beside it works better there......

the other common use would be for RIS (remote installation service) where on first boot of a new empty computer it would look on the network and find a ris server which would then download and install a full OS and all programs setup ahead of time to be installed on clients from then forward would run local OS
 
Originally posted by spikemic
the other common use would be for RIS (remote installation service) where on first boot of a new empty computer it would look on the network and find a ris server which would then download and install a full OS and all programs setup ahead of time to be installed on clients from then forward would run local OS
that's almost exactly why i want to do this. only i'd have the xp cd on the server hd and could reformat any computer (that supports lan boot) without using the cd.

not that i really need to do it... just really curious how to do it if i ever needed to.

[edit] also, i have a friend who might be setting up a lan store (pay-by-the-hour type deal) and want to be able to let people modify their game settings and download junk all they want... and every day after closing, we could just copy the hd image (with os, games installed) from a server.
 
could do something like put a hd drawer in or a second drive in each with a ghost of original image (or even a second partition on one drive just big enough to image the os/software) and then just put in ghost floppy and reghost to first(boot) disk when you need to restore..about 20 min for almost 40 gig...... or over a network can use ghost enterprise which can store images on a server and then copy to clients....

can elaborate if nessisary original image drive nee only be big enough for software.....will resize image to whatever recieving disk is automaticly....... drawers are nice and when its figured out you can be very creative with ghost
 
taurus

The only reason some MB's support Lan Boot is for the ability to run as a diskless station. In order to do this you need to run a terminal server of some sort.


For what you are wanting to do you need a DOS bootdisk with the drivers for your NIC. Check the manufacturer's website for the proper drivers.
 

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