Networking question.

[SulSeeker]

I know alot of you have wired nic's to support network booting, but is there a wireless nic that supports network booting (costs an arm and a leg probabily,) or couldn't you use the folding@home server project from a cd (kinda like Knoppix) and just run it from the CD? I'm just curious, and if it's a stupid question, just say so.

 

[vxspiritxv]

Thumb/flash drive. CD. Floppy. All of em can start up linux, mount a network share and start folding. I'm sure some one else has done this all ready, should be a image out there somewhere.

With out being near expert at linux, it's hard to make one yourself. If it must be cd, slackware used to have their source code up on making a linux bootable cd, but don't rember if it had samba in its default kernel. If ya want floppy its easyer, just need to find one that has samba in the kernel, mount it with a kernel that supports minix (usually minix) edit the startup scripts to mount your drive and start folding.

 

[Kvothe]

It sounds like this is what the Overclockix Live CD was made for, but it sounds like you were already thinking on those lines. There's a pretty extensive post about it in the FAQ post.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I know alot of you have wired nic's to support network booting, but is there a wireless nic that supports network booting (costs an arm and a leg probabily,) or couldn't you use the folding@home server project from a cd (kinda like Knoppix) and just run it from the CD? I'm just curious, and if it's a stupid question, just say so.

According to this article. you'd be able to boot a wireless setup via PXE only with a network bridge hooked to a real ethernet card with PXE. I've looked around a couple of other places, but no luck finding a wireless card with netboot support anywhere. If you want to keep your boxen in the garage or something, you could probably afford to get one bridge for all of them, and then a normal switch to share the connection.

You could just use the Overclockix cd, and it will probably recognize the wlan device and use it fine. I haven't tried it, though, so YMMV. I think the most reliable method of getting the boxen going would be with a bridge and either netboot them with fold-server or cd boot them with Overclockix. Fold-server would require a dedicated server machine (which could be on either end of the wireless link) with a hard drive; OCix would only need a cdrom drive on the machine in question.

 

[SulSeeker]

Thanks Guys. I'm just trying to save from running cabling everywhere when I finally get a farm of my own. I was thinking I could save money without having to buy a 24+ port hub or switch, but then again, I guess the price of wireless cards would negate any potential savings I would obtain over plunking money down for one.