On Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 02:46:18PM +0200, Pål Løberg wrote: > > Is it possible to do the entire installation of Debian i386 from TFTP > without using any disks? > > I've got a diskless workstation with a network card that allot me to boot > it using TFTP, but all the info I've found on installing Debian using TFTP > (not much either) seems to require booting from a floppy.
i think it should be possible, i know it is for sparc and powerpc. i
have no idea on intel (is that even what your using?)
on powerpc all that you need to do is setup bootp to shoot the
bootloader over, and the bootloader gets its config file from tftp.
the config is like lilo where you have an image section like this:
image=linux
label=debian
initrd=root.bin
initrd-size=8192
this will vary for other systems, as they have different bootstrap
mechanisms.
you do need to make the installation files available via NFS or some
other means i don't think you can install drivers/base over tftp (not
sure on that...) but if you have tftp NFS should not be a problem.
all you really need to figure out is how to netboot the kernel with
the ramdisk, this is usually handled by the bootloader (lilo, yaboot
etc) if this is intel i don't know what bootloader they use for
network boot (if any)
--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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