Re: Diskless boot for win95/98

[Michael Rendell <michael@cs.mun.ca>]

Hi,

I think I can shed some light on this question:

 > Before jumping into it I would just like to know if there is any foolproof
 > theory to suggest that this idea of remote booting win 95/98 from a linux
 > server is just not possible?

In general the answer is no, however you can do it. :-)  When win95 boots
disklessly, it starts off in 16 bit mode.  Since netbeui is the only 16 bit
protocol stack it has available, it must boot the `root' file system(s)
via netbeui.  Since, in general, unix doesn't support netbeui (and samba
also doesn't support it), you can't boot win95 disklessly from unix.

However.

John Rochester and my self have done what is needed to get it to work
using freebsd (not linux) as a server.  What was done was:
    - the IEEE802.2 protocol layer (aka llc t1 and t2) was implemented
      in the kernel,
    - the netbeui/netbios protocol was implemented in user space (which
      uses the llc layer),
    - and, samba has hacked to include and use the netbeui layer.
A registry editor was also written (and various scripts for comparing
registries) to allow register modifications to be done on the server.
Also, a bunch of scripts were written to create boot images and
to create machine directories from scratch, with an appropriate registry
when a client boots.

The patches for freebsd & samba are available from:
	http://www.cs.mun.ca/~michael/samba/
and the registry utilities are available from:
	http://www.cs.mun.ca/~michael/regedit/
The scripts for setting up boot images and machine directories haven't
been bundled up.

This software has been used for the last couple of years to service
a lab of 60 diskless pcs which could boot win95, win3.1 and freebsd
as well as to service a number of office machines.  In general, it
is very stable (well, as stable as win95 ever is).  The only oddity is
that, when booting, when the client switches from 16 to 32 bit mode, it
sometimes doesn't make it (it appears that if a packet (eg, broadcast
packet) comes in at the wrong time, the client hangs).

Before you decide you'd like to check this out, there are some things
to note:
    - It only withs with win95a (to which patches can later be applied
      to bring it `up to date')
      It does not work with win98 - this is because microsoft did put
      the needed bootstrapping stuff in to get it to work (setmdir is not
      present).
    - It is fairly painful to install new software - many packages
      expect there to be a C:, and they expect to be able to write to
      C: (or where ever the software is installed) when they are running.
      They often store user preferences in a file or in the system registry
      instead of the user registry, etc.
    - The samba patches are for version 1.9.17 - I haven't attempted to
      get it to work with newer versions.
We are looking at upgrading the lab to win98 or win2k and it looks like
we will be forced to switch to the network boot + local hard disk solution.

Hope this is of some use,
Michael
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