[Live-demo] experimenting with PXE netbooting a lab full of PCs

[Hamish]

Hi, just playing with an idea here,

has anyone tried net-booting a computer lab from a single master
Live DVD using PXE + TFTP?

For the master disc The tftpd-hpa package is only about 50 kB,
then I guess you could use a 8gb usb drive or dual layer DVD
master with full copy of everything in /var/lib/tftpboot/; or
full copy -> fslint -> hardlinks on a single 4.3gb DVD; or
symlinks from / into /var/lib/tftpboot/ on a single 4.3gb DVD..?

two potential problems:

-The bit that worries me most is the DHCP part of it and avoiding
the wrath of the local IT dept by messing up their network. i.e.
if the PC lab machines are already assigned IP addresses based on
their MACs or wall-socket, it would be rather nice to respect
that and otherwise fly under the radar by using the official DHCP.

-What makes it into local RAM and how much happens over the
network? When it's working is it effectively a thin-client setup
with a central application server, or is PXE better suited as a
minimal busybox bootstrapping method, so not much use for
temporarily possessing the brains of the lab's PCs with a full
xubuntu environment? What if these PCs all have >8gb RAM? :)


some notes:
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/installation-guide/amd64/install-tftp.html
http://www.linuxreaders.com/2010/06/24/pxe-boot-ubuntu-10-04/

apt-get install tftpd-hpa
/etc/init.d/tftpd-hpa restart
mkdir /mnt/tmp
mount -o loop osgeo-live-mini-4.5.iso /mnt/tmp
rsync -lav /mnt/tmp/install/ /var/lib/tftpboot/


?

thanks,
Hamish