On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: [snip]
> > So the NIC in your Linux box must have to be PXE capable? > > It depends. If you want to PXE boot the box directly and have > it run the Plan9 kernel natively, then at some point, something > will have to be PXE capable. That could be the machine's BIOS > or BIOS code on the NIC or even a boot loader loaded from a > disk or CD or... Got it ... > On the other hand, for the case of virtualbox the PXE booting > support is built into virtualbox itself. ummm... > > Truth be > > told, I've never set up a net-booting system. > > Because Plan9 was designed from the ground up around a network > organization, it does a good job of supporting net booting. It's > not hard to set up. > > > The Plan ( server would > > have to have enough disk space to store its own stuff, plus the > > workstation's file system? Could get dicey, if you've got a few > > workstations net-booting, could it not? > > It can. The clients all share a single copy of the common files, > but each user will have his own files on the common server. > But the full Plan9 installation is quite managable. You can > do quite a lot with only a few gig. Yeah! It's only going to be me using the server. So it's not like I'm going to hit it that hard. Can I run several Plan9 boxen, each dedicated to a task - like mail; named; httpd, etc. All headless, but just purring away ;) [snip] > > I'm in trouble already ... > > Rotfl... You will be assimilated :) Seriously though, the Plan9 > community is a good bunch and everyone is happy to help anyone > who genuinely wants to learn. I sense that already. I've got _a lot_ to learn; but I'm willing. BTW, I'm just a 63yr old programmer / networking hobbyist - all self-taught. As I said in another post, my networking experience started when I discovered FreeBSD - some 15 years ago. I've had some nice LANs running - all before WIFI, and before routing appliances were available. No probs. I enjoy it. Starting over with Plan9 is going to be fun. > My suggestion would be to work on your spare machine first. > You won't have to worry about blowing anything away and > it might evolve into a useful part of your network. I'd also > start by installing from the CD as a stand-alone machine. > After you know your way around some, you can try to convert > it to a combined CPU/auth/file server and then look into > how you connect to it from other machines. Sounds like a plan -- pun intended! Much obliged! -- Duke
