Installing Linux (without CD/floppies)

Donald Becker becker at scyld.com
Tue Feb 18 06:05:48 PST 2003


On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Mark Hahn wrote:

> > As long as your network cards' support PXE (most do nowadays), then it is
> 
> is that really true?  great if so!  I haven't looked, but tend to only
> expect builtin eth to support PXE...
> 

Almost all current, performance-oriented motherboards have built-in Fast
Ethernet with PXE support in the BIOS Flash.

Most low-end Fast Ethernet cards have a socket but do not include a boot
ROM.  It's difficult to find the correct Flash-ROM part, and you must
still program them one by one.  It's easier and less expensive to just
buy the slightly more expensive 3Com or Intel NICs with built-in Flash-ROMs.

No matter what installation you use, we recommend leaving the system set
to PXE boot.

-- 
Donald Becker				becker at scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993




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