User manual

Etherboot User Manual

See the list of supported NICs in the Appendix.

2. I have a machine with the X processor and Y megabytes of memory. What can I expect to run on it?

Please note that these estimates are approximate:

• On a 386 with at least 4MB of memory you can boot Linux. With 4MB perhaps only a few telnet

sessions are possible. With 8MB you might be able to run a text based web browser like Lynx or

W3M. You can also run ﬁrewalls such as ﬂoppyfw (http://www.zelow.no/ﬂoppyfw/).

• On a 486 with 16MB of memory you can run X to make an X-terminal.

• On a Pentium with 32MB of memory you can run an X-terminal and some applications locally,

say perhaps printing, daemons to control devices, etc.

• On anything faster and with more memory you could perhaps do distributed computation, e.g. a

cluster.

9.4. Booting Linux

1. The kernel loads but it cannot ﬁnd a NFS server for the ﬁlesystem.

Do you have a NFS server running and is it allowed to serve this client? NFS is actually several

services. On Linux at least you need: nfsd (either kernel or userland version), rpc.mountd and

portmapper. Check if the tcpwrappers conﬁg ﬁle is allowing portmapper to receive the request. Look

at the log ﬁles for clues. Did we already mention that log ﬁles are your friends?

2. The ﬁlesystem mounts but it says something about not being able to open an initial console. Or

alternatively, various services complain about not being able to write to the ﬁlesystem.

A common mistake in Linux NFS servers is to put extra spaces in /etc/exports. Please see the NFS

FAQ (http://nfs.sourceforge.net/) for frequently answered questions about Linux NFS services.

Please review the Troubleshooting section for what is required on this root ﬁlesystem. The situation

is complicated by the fact that there are many possible ways of setting this up, including using a root

ﬁlesystem that is on ramdisk. If you wish to avoid many of the troubles, try using a packaged

solution such as LTSP (http://www.ltsp.org/).

9.5. Running X

1. I tried to run X on the client but it aborted.