WiFi and net booting MDs - possible?

[colinjones]

Is it possible to do a PXE boot of a diskless MD over WiFi? Can't think how to get such an MD to connect to an AP first to allow this, especially with encryption! Anybody know of any BIOS's that would provide this functionality that could be flashed onto generic hardware? Stretching... I know!

... or perhaps any PCI WiFi cards that can be preconfigured to provide the connection so that it is transparent to the PC?

... or can it just not be done with diskless?

... really want to avoid having to have a wired network everywhere just to support the boot process... especially with .11n coming

[deffcon]

Hi,

The only thing i could imagine is booting a diskless md in virtualisation software like virtualbox, with a nic nat through a wireless network card of the host, that is already possible but no video performance no real good audio performance.

Dave

[teedge77]

well....this may not be a solution for you but you could use a second wireless access point. itd just work like a bridge and you could just plug the md into it. without knowing your setup that may not be helpful at all. i can only imagine tht being aesthetically awful without some work.

[msmiley]

like teedge77 said, you would need a wireless AP with an ethernet port such as the
Linksys WET54G
http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-WET54G-Wireless-G-Ethernet-Bridge/dp/B00008WMBT

Such devices are externally powered, so they connect to the wireless network on power up (or remain connected to the wifi network if never powered down) based on the settings you provide on the web interface.
Then you plug in the linuxmce MD to the WET54G using ethernet and it doesn't know that it is going over wireless.

There should be similar devices for 802.11N.

[darrenmason]

Colin,

I don't see why it is not possible.

When I was messing around with older machines which did not have PXE boot compatible BIOS I had to make boot floppies that had the network card driver embedded on them. This is essentially the same thing isn't it? It's just that you want wireless drivers instead.

I guess you could even build a really cut down kernel with the drivers that was just used to get GRUB running which supports PXE booting - then load that on a floppy or USB drive (if bios supports booting from that).

If it was common wireless chipset that was well supported in linux that would probably help.

Also, if you can get NDIS drivers for it - then I remember that there is DOS based network boot disks that can be made quite easily.

HTH
Darren

[tschak909]

I've done this before using a Wireless Bridge, configured to the nearest access point, and plugging the MD into it. Beware though, performance is going to SUCK because 802.11 isn't switched!

-Thom

[deffcon]

Etherboot might be something for you !!!

Dave