Subject: Re: What binaries do I need for firewall?
To: None <johnh@david.wheaton.edu, is@beverly.rhein.de>
From: Gordon W. Ross <gwr@mc.com>
List: current-users
Date: 05/17/1996 09:29:31
> Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 22:45:35 -0500 (CDT)
> From: "John C. Hayward" <johnh@david.wheaton.edu>

> On Thu, 16 May 1996 is@beverly.rhein.de wrote:
[ about minimal root on one diskette ]

> I had wanted to do this and was thinking of setting up a bootable 
> diskless system.  The idea was that staff people who have an office PC with
> modem and are connected to eithernet and use Windows durring the day
> could put in a floppy and reboot their computer with the floppy in when they 
> leave the office and could have a dedicated internet ppp link from home.
> 
> The disk and swap space could be allocated via nfs to some NetBSD server.
> 
> I just did not have time to try to implement it. 

It is quite easy to make an i386 PC boot with root on NFS.
I've done it by putting a DISKLESS kernel on a floppy disk,
and boot it with the option to "just use the configured root"
(I forget what the option was, but I DO recall thinking, "Gee,
this is really dumb that I have to TELL it to use what I said
should be the root in the config file!").

Note that you have to do the usual server setup as described
in the diskless(8) manual page, just like with diskless Suns.

Gordon