Network booting — often called “diskless booting” — can dramatically simplify some tough system administration headaches. In a computer lab, a classroom, an Internet cafe, a Beowulf-style compute cluster, or a render farm, network booting can centralize system configuration and management, making it easier and faster to maintain, repair, and upgrade those networks of machines. (See the sidebar “Network Booting Scenarios” for a few of the many uses for network booting.)
Using network booting, you can configure new machines just by plugging them in and turning them on; you can upgrade a raft of machines in a couple of hours; you can even eliminate the headaches caused by well-meaning user “customizations.” More than just a convenience, network booting is essential for any computing environment that has a large number of essentially-identical systems. And, recent developments are making network booting simpler and more accessible.
Network booting can’t install new SIMMs in a PC — you’ll want to hang on to your trusty screwdriver for that — but network booting can save you time, prevent frustration and hassles, and let you focus on more important tasks, like building that petaflop supercomputer cluster from spare 486s.
Let’s examine how network booting works, learn how to configure a Linux boot server, and set up a Linux machine to boot over the network. First, we’ll develop a working configuration where each boot client has its own separate set of directories on the server. Then, we’ll look…
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