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

[Hamish]

Cameron wrote:
> I assume it would be valuable for running a workshop where
> you need to quickly configure computers.

Exactly. After a bit more thought it may be considerable more
trouble that just burning 1 DVD per computer, but my next ideas
are (a) boot from DVDs but the "master" computer also has a NFS, samba, sshfs, or httpfs+fuse (does such a thing exist?) share
which could serve up the session's sample dataset to everyone
without the need to stuff it on to the main osgeo live DVD.
And (b) in situations where anything outside their experience-
adverse IT admins are reluctant to let us reboot from a non-
Microsoft DVD, but would have less trouble installing an Oracle
product: if we install VirtualBox on all the PCs in the lab, how
easy is it to then connect the VMs up the teacher's NFS data
directory? Would it be possible (@Brian?) to ssh into those
Windows7 hosted VirtualBoxes from the teacher's one? [yay `screen`
+ ssh-keygen for being able to help diagnose things without
having to steal the keyboard from the student & not have 30 ssh
xterms open]


I'd still love to hear from someone who's got experience with
PXE though, as maybe it holds something.


thanks,
Hamish

ps- inspiration:  http://pareto.uab.es/mcreel/ParallelKnoppix/