Networks Booting across the network

Well, time to get your advice again!

I'm just about to move into a new place and building a media PC for the living room.

To try and cut down on the noise (and a few other things) I thought I'd use some of the spare hard disk space on the server. It's across Gigabit LAN, and speed's not really an issue with tv/music.

So I've done a little googling and searched these forums for booting an OS across the network, but I can't find something I can get started with. Anyone got any experience they wouldn't mind sharing?



Ok, hoping to boot either WinXP or Madrake Linux - the media PC's running a 3Ghz P4c and the motherboard is an Abit IC7-G (with 1Gig RAM). The server's going to be running a flavour of linux, currently Mandrake, but it may change with some experimentation. If you need any more info, give me a shout.

 

I don't think you can boott actual OSs aacross a lan I think you can only boot up LAN Terminals

 

It really isnt worth the trouble trust me.

you need to see if your network card supports network boot (which I doubt)

 

How about using a compact flash ide adapter to boot from and storing most of the stuff on the server. Should be quiet and small (if size is one of the other reasons). Although a harddrive will be quiet too most of the time if it's only used to boot and most the other stuff taken from the server I think?

 

I think the read/write times are really slow on Compactflash.

 

The best thing to do if you want to boot over a network is to learn about/install/configure PXE support.

If you have a NIC that supports PXE, you're in business.

 

I dont think they would need to be fast just to boot from, and then load whatever else from the network.

 

It's true I don't need amazing boot times - as long as it's not 15minutes or something!

Suppose then I could store all the program files on the server - so not a bad plan! Cheers.


As for the PXE idea - gotta admit I don't know what it is... but a quick google will help there!


Really it's cost/space/sound saving - hoping to use a small case and with so much storage spare on the file server, thought it might be a good idea.

Please, I'm open for more ideas and I'll get back to you on the PXE thing (if CF is the way, keep an eye out on project logs!)

 

Well, I did give you a link to start with.