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hosted by  |
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| bootd |
| 1 what is it? |
| | 1.1 why is this a good idea? |
| | 1.2 what's wrong with the standard implementations? |
| | 1.3 why is bootd better? |
| 2 does it work? |
| | 2.1 what does it run on? |
| | 2.2 what protocols does it support? |
| | 2.3 why is protocol XYZ not supported? |
| | 2.4 what clients have been tested? |
| 3 where can I get it? |
| | 3.1 who should I complain to? |
| | 3.2 how can I stay informed when new versions appear? |
| 4 why is this page so ugly? |
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| 1 what is it? |
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The bootd project allows netbooting a wide variety of clients using
different protocols using one configuration and one server daemon,
with good configurability and diagnostics.
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| | 1.1 why is this a good idea? |
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Until now, netbooting has been a very nightmarish adventure for most
'normal' users. It required either in-depth knowledge of what was
going on, or quite a bit of luck and patience. Recently, there appeared
a very well written HOWTO, but that can't change the fact that
there's still too much that you can do wrong, that that it's
close to impossible to efficiently find out what it was...
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| | 1.2 what's wrong with the standard implementations? |
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Because each of these is a separate program written by a different author,
you have to set up at least 3 (and often more) server daemons, each
with its very own configuration file format, quirks, and limitations.
Most of these configuration file formats are easy to get wrong without
the program complaining (oops, did I forget that backslash?), and
difficult to read. The information is mostly redundant, in fact you
just enter the same information again and again and again, if anything
changes, you have to change it at several different places, and if there's
a typo somewhere...
If anything goes wrong, logging is generally poor, and diagnostics
difficult for the uninitiated, so it usually just seems to 'not work'
for some unknown reason, which is frustrating.
and last but not least, you have to run several processes instead of
a single one, each of them reading raw packets from the network.
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| | 1.3 why is bootd better? |
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bootd puts all configuration in one place, in an easy to write and
easy to read format, which is not so easy to get wrong by accident. It also
has very extensive and flexible logging to make it easy to find out
where something goes wrong. It's modular design makes it easy to add
a new protocol, once this protocol has been understood.
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| 2 does it work? |
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I am using it to netboot all my machines, except for dhcp and mop,
which have not (yet) been implemented. I am confident that it already
has all features of the standard (open source) rbootd, rarpd, tftpd
and bootparamd implementations
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| | 2.1 what does it run on? |
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So far, it runs only on FreeBSD. Currently, I am on porting it
to Linux. There may be versions for other systems, too, and care has
been taken to make it portable to any system that supports
libpcap/libnet and is reasonably posix-compliant.
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| | 2.2 what protocols does it support? |
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RARP, Bootparam, TFTP, and RMP works. There is some initial code for
DHCP/BOOTP but it doesn't really do anything yet. After that, I will
add the DEC MOP protocol. I will try to implement any booting protocol
if I get enough information on it.
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| | 2.3 why is protocol XYZ not supported? |
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because either I have no documentation or no way to test it.
If you want to have support added for a new protocol, you can try to
add it yourself and send me the patches (after all, that's the reason
why it's open source)
if you are not a coder, you can still help. Send any information you
have (reference implementation(s), documentation, output of 'tcpdump
-s1500 -e -X', whatever you think that might be helpful), and of course
you can act as a tester.
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| | 2.4 what clients have been tested? |
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| Machine |
OS |
Version |
Protocols |
Status |
| HP 425t |
NetBSD |
1.5 |
RMP, RARP, TFTP |
OK |
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| SUN SPARCstation 4 |
Solaris |
2.5.1 |
RARP, TFTP, Bootparam |
OK |
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NetBSD |
1.5 |
RARP, TFTP, Bootparam |
OK |
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Linux |
RedHat 6.2 |
RARP, TFTP |
OK |
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| DECstation 5000/33 |
NetBSD |
1.5 |
RARP, TFTP |
OK |
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| NCD 19 |
NCDWare |
3.x |
TFTP |
OK |
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| 3 where can I get it? |
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| Version 0.2 (2002-06-21) |
| bootd.tar.gz (1.2MBytes) |
Complete bootd source, including documentation |
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| | 3.1 who should I complain to? |
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if you have problems, success stories, requests, additions
(code/documentation)..., please use the sourceforge tools at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootd/
(Forums, Tracker, Bugs, Support, Patches, Lists)
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| | 3.2 how can I stay informed when new versions appear? |
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you can subscribe to the mailinglist
bootd-announce@lists.sourceforge.net
this (low traffic) moderated list will only be used to announce new
versions of bootd.
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| 4 why is this page so ugly? |
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because I invested approx. 2h to make it. If ever I find some time,
I'll recreate it using flash, cascading stylesheets, layers, and
frontpage extensions.
just kidding ;) I prefer to spend my time coding, so it will probably
look like that forever.
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| page last updated Thu Jul 04 by pajarola |