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Netbooting and Diskless Workstations with FreeBSD

Posted by michael on from the keeping-the-users-from-messing-things-up dept.

sootman writes "O'Reilly's ONLamp site has a neat two-part series on building a netboot server and diskless workstations with FreeBSD. Nothing too earthshaking but it's always an interesting topic and it's nice to see a new writeup on it every so often."

23 comments

  1. Great stuff by ulib · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... and here's a handy collection of all BSD-related articles published on onlamp. :)
    (I'm posting it because the link is not obvious).

    1. Re:Great stuff by molnarcs · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the link. Onlamp is one of the best FreeBSD related sites. I always find their writings (interviews, guides, articles) very helpful. They are also good readings for those who haven't tried, but are curious about FreeBSD.

    2. Re:Great stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      They had to call it "lamp" to appeal to the masses. Then they realized that to attract competent users as well, they had to host and maintain a rich BSD section.

      Jeez... you bothered to create fake accounts? Trolly you *are* a freak!.. :-O

    3. Re:Great stuff by j3ll0 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the link....I don't know how I haven't found that site before...

      :)

  2. Diskless boot for OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is also this for OpenBSD. It is intended for flash booting, but with PXE it can be used to boot diskless systems too.

  3. Re:Oh, trolly... not again. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah... and these weird people also think it's more reliable than linux! Go figure. :-)

  4. Re:Oh, trolly... not again. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Come on, trolly... don't be too harsh. You know, FreeBSD admins usually *love* Linux. No, no: they *love* it. Really. :-)

    (ehm... disclaimer: I think the pic is funny... for kindof 2 seconds. As a FreeBSD user, I think the author of that not-so-useful web site is on the same level of our troll, here... :)

  5. Funny that this topic comes along... by CoolVibe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On the dragonflybsd mailing lists there's a big thread about using PXEboot to netboot the new installer so machines without spindles or floppies can install dragonflybsd. Lots of info on how to set up DHCP for booting pxe-enabled machines. Might also be worth checking out.

  6. BSD == good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is becoming more and more obvious that FreeBSD is the best Linux distribution out there. Why don't more people use it, and why don't we hear more about it in the media?

  7. Am I the only one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ....who read that as "dickless workstations"?

    1. Re:Am I the only one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Don't worry, it's quite usual for Linux users to have inferiority complexes. You're not alone by any means. Cheer up! :-)

  8. err... the best what? [Re:BSD == good] by ulib · · Score: 5, Informative
    ... I'm gonna be kind, even if sb who calls FreeBSD a "Linux distribution" wouldn't really deserve it. ;-)

    a) FreeBSD is Berkeley Unix, Linux is a Unix-clone. They look similar to the average user, but deep inside they're two quite different things.

    b) the media tend to identify Open Source OS's with Linux because of the community hype - GNU & Linux are about politics as well, thus they attract a wider range of people. BSD is a purely technical and academical thing. These different commitments are well reflected in the 2 licenses: BSD (much simpler and less restrictive) and GPL (an anti-proprietary political manifesto).

    c) FreeBSD is quite widely used and, notwithstanding the lack of hype, its user base is growing pretty fast.

    Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD
    1. Re:err... the best what? [Re:BSD == good] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "... I'm gonna be kind"

      DON'T
      FEED
      THE
      TROLL!!!

  9. word.. by comet69 · · Score: 1

    sounds sweet.. i love the diskless technology.. there were some great Debian packages that made diskless booting a sinch.. simple NFS booting.. i can imagine it working much better with FBSD..

    i wonder if anyone has worked on a virtual architecture for diskless clutering applications? to me, besides saving a decent amount on hard drives, the only true advantage to diskless booting, is utilizing the theory of clustering, using things like load balancing..

    --
    - Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..