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Question

Alternative to Mac for NetBoot Server?

  • March 1, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 9 views
A
  • Anonymous

I'm in a large campus and with the demise of the Xserve find that our server team doesn't want a bunch of mac mini's as OSX Server's for a variety of reasons.

That leaves me with the problem of how to manage Apple Desktops and Laptops etc. I see in the latest JAMF nations some guides for installing Casper Suite on a variety of platforms other than OS X Server.

The piece that seems to be missing is how to do NetBoot on Linux

I found this excellent article http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story061220102102611 (HOWTO: Configure GNU/Linux to provide BSDP NetBoot services) which seems to be a good start but leaves me with some questions and the author is no longer at the email address given.

Currently on OS X server I can disable the DHCP server and use our central DHCP server. Even with the Apple DHCP service disabled I am able to filter access by MAC address with the Apple NetBoot service. Do you know how this might be done for a Linux NetBoot service without resorting to using the DHCP service?

-- Regards,

David London

    2 replies

    S
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    • sean
    • Contributor
    • March 1, 2011

    It was a long time ago that I looked at this and I don't recall specifically what you are asking, but if I remember correctly, you only have the option to have one bootable image from the server (it may have been one per architecture type), but you didn't have the option to have several to choose from. Maybe that has changed now.

    Sean

    A
    • Anonymous
    • March 1, 2011

    This is what I'm basing my work on (as I have time):

    http://unflyingobject.com/blog/posts/1061
    http://unflyingobject.com/blog/posts/1063

    FreeBSD, not Linux and there are some limitations. I'm just hoping that one of two things happens before my existing equipment isn't reliable (1. Someone has come up with a true solution. 2. I'm in the Peace Corps digging ditches three thousand miles away from the nearest Mac.)

    thom

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