[Novalug] Booting (several PCs) from USB drive

Megan Larko larkoc@iges.org
Tue Jan 8 17:17:40 EST 2008


Ed James wrote:

Hello Folks,


> Jay,
> 
>    Something in the back of my mind remembers machines being able to
> boot "over the net".  If this is the case, perhaps each mobo could
> boot via it's NIC, assuming all the mobos are networked, so that only
> one machine would actually need to have a drive attached?

As mentioned in another topic-title post (LTSP), what is needed would be 
a motherboard that could pxe boot (pronounced pixie-boot).  PXE stands 
for Pre-Execution Environment.   I use it at work all the time.  My 
office runs compute nodes and data-storage nodes disklessly  (is that a 
word?).  A server on the local network is required and the clients must 
be capable of pxebooting (network boot).  If you already have a machine 
that is "always up", then setting up network boot is an option.  (Note: 
I did not say that the very initial configuration is easy or 
straight-forward because in my opinion there are several "gotchas".)

megan
> 
>    Ed James
> 
> 
> Quoting Jay Hart <jhart@kevla.org>:
> 
>> Ok, again going with a clustered solution.
>>
>> I want to know if I mount a USB based flash drive, or a drive with a USB
>> interface, if I could connect the drive into a USB hub, with each PC 
>>  having it
>> set to boot from USB, and then having a UBS cable connected to the 
>> hub, would
>> this work?
>>
>> The layout would look like:
>>
>> USB drive -----> Hub ------->>> PC 1
>>                    \-------->>> PC 2
>>
>> What I'm looking for is a way to boot 2 or 3 PCs, from the same drive.
>>
>> Comments???
>>
>> Jay
>>
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> 
> 
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