[H-GEN] PXE capable network cards

[Jason Parker-Burlingham]

Tim Kent <tim.kent at wkconsulting.com.au> writes:

> Jason Parker-Burlingham wrote:
>>>The other packages I had to use were DHCP to get the IP address and
>>>boot image, tftp to allow downloading the files, then nfs to allow
>> It's the ancillary stuff that gets you.  I mean, this isn't rocket
>> science---why should a PC built in 2004 require anything like PXE at
>> all, instead of simply being capable of DHCP and TFTP from the get-go?
> Are you comparing this to say, 'boot net' on Sun?

That's exactly what I'm doing.

> Maybe that's why PC stands for /personal/ computer :-)

I think the unstated assumption here is that a personal or home user
would never want to netboot their machine.  This may well be the case,
but having the capability would make like a lot easier for technicians
who have to (re-)install and diagnose these computers.  The fact that
it's *still* not possible to do so after twenty years utterly fails to
impress me.

Okay, rant over.  I'd still be interested in an explanation of what
PXE *does*.  My impression is that it works around some deficiency in
standard PC netbooting; certainly a Sun requires nothing more than
DHCP, TFTP and a bare-bones filesystem.  Why are PCs different?
-- 
http://panix.com/~jasonp?BabyPictures