Results 1 to 7 of 7

Thread: An extremely difficult question

  1. #1
    The LHC rulez! DataMatrix's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Liverpool
    Posts
    511
    Thanks
    21
    Thanked
    10 times in 10 posts

    An extremely difficult question

    I have an extremely difficult question, after quite a bit of Googling and being unable to find anything that relates to what I need to achieve. I have came here to ask a question.

    I am in need of a way to:
    * Boot from USB stick to load network drivers and connect to a network share.
    * Mount an ISO and boot it

    What I am trying to achieve is. I stick in a USB stick, it connects to a share, I select the ISO I wish to mount, it boots from it.

    I do not wish to use PXE boot or copy the ISO contents to the USB stick.

  2. #2
    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Looking down & checking on swearing
    Posts
    19,378
    Thanks
    2,892
    Thanked
    3,403 times in 2,693 posts

    Re: An extremely difficult question

    You are going to need more than network drivers. There are some Linux distros that will boot from a USB stick - so booting to an OS isn't that hard., and you could then mount an iso image. But if you wanted to reboot from that iso image... that might be somewhat harder, because even if you loaded the iso into a ram disk, rebooting would almost certainly remove the ram drive.

    A soft reboot might be possible - along the lines (again) of how some linux configurations boot - an ramdrive image of the kernel (containiong any drivers required to access specific hardware, or, for example, a software RAID or Logical Volume) which then loads the main OS filesystem from the hard drive and transfers control to it. And all this is done in a scripting language (in Fedora - and probably other distros too)

    How you would actually do it is another matter - load the minimum OS from the USB stick and run it in a RAM drive, download the iso with a file system, unpack it and load it to either another RAM drive or a hard drive and transfer control. I would think it would need a pretty customised boot script o do it. And if that is a different OS, I'm still not sure how you would transfer control, because at some point you would have to overwrite all the interrupt vectors in low memory.

    Or perhaps it might be possible to boot a virtual machine from a USB stick and then load an iso image of an OS to that.

    But I am only floating possible ideas - I think it will require quite a bit of work to realise it. As you say, an extremely difficult question, and one that is very hard to answer.
    (\__/)
    (='.'=)
    (")_(")

    Been helped or just 'Like' a post? Use the Thanks button!
    My broadband speed - 750 Meganibbles/minute

  3. #3
    The LHC rulez! DataMatrix's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Liverpool
    Posts
    511
    Thanks
    21
    Thanked
    10 times in 10 posts

    Re: An extremely difficult question

    I can't believe that this isn't a viable option in today's computing. I mean we have PXE boot, etc but why not something like this?

    Maybe I'm the first to come up with the idea

  4. #4
    Senior Member Stringent's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Neverland
    Posts
    5,227
    Thanks
    45
    Thanked
    155 times in 117 posts
    • Stringent's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Intel DQ57TM
      • CPU:
      • Intel i5 760
      • Memory:
      • 8GB
      • Storage:
      • 1TB
      • Graphics card(s):
      • NVIDIA Geforce 260GTX
      • PSU:
      • Corsair HX620
      • Case:
      • Coolermaster Centurion
      • Operating System:
      • Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dual Iiyama 24"
      • Internet:
      • Patchy

    Re: An extremely difficult question

    That might be achievable in some kind of virtualized environment but only having started investigating it I can't tell you much else. I do not think it's easily achievable though what you would want to do. Would take a lot of man hours!

  5. #5
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    4,826
    Thanks
    161
    Thanked
    358 times in 288 posts
    • badass's system
      • Motherboard:
      • ASUS P8Z77-m pro
      • CPU:
      • Core i5 3570K
      • Memory:
      • 32GB
      • Storage:
      • 1TB Samsung 850 EVO, 2TB WD Green
      • Graphics card(s):
      • Radeon RX 580
      • PSU:
      • Corsair HX520W
      • Case:
      • Silverstone SG02-F
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10 X64
      • Monitor(s):
      • Del U2311, LG226WTQ
      • Internet:
      • 80/20 FTTC

    Re: An extremely difficult question

    Quote Originally Posted by DataMatrix View Post
    I can't believe that this isn't a viable option in today's computing. I mean we have PXE boot, etc but why not something like this?

    Maybe I'm the first to come up with the idea
    Because there's absolutely no demand for it. If you need to connect to the network for an operating system, to boot off, you might as well connect to the network to select said operating system in the first place

    What are you trying to achieve? What do you need to do this for?
    "In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."

  6. #6
    Senior Member MaddAussie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Deepest Darkest Dorset
    Posts
    1,708
    Thanks
    628
    Thanked
    297 times in 179 posts
    • MaddAussie's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Asus ROG Strix Z370G
      • CPU:
      • i7 8700k (5.1Ghz)
      • Memory:
      • 16Gb
      • Storage:
      • 500G 960 EVO NMVE
      • Graphics card(s):
      • GTX 1070
      • PSU:
      • Corsair RM650i
      • Case:
      • Corsair Carbide A1r 240
      • Operating System:
      • Win 10
      • Monitor(s):
      • 24" Dell HD + Samsung HD

    Re: An extremely difficult question

    It doesn't do exactly what you want but this is the closest I can think of to what you want to do..

    http://www.i-odd.com/english/product/iodd2501.php

    Its basically a US ESATA HDD that you can copy ISO's on to and then select which one you would like to boot from, also some of the remote management cards allow you to boot a machine from a networked ISO image

  7. Received thanks from:

    DataMatrix (16-03-2010)

  8. #7
    The LHC rulez! DataMatrix's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Liverpool
    Posts
    511
    Thanks
    21
    Thanked
    10 times in 10 posts

    Re: An extremely difficult question

    Quote Originally Posted by badass View Post
    Because there's absolutely no demand for it. If you need to connect to the network for an operating system, to boot off, you might as well connect to the network to select said operating system in the first place

    What are you trying to achieve? What do you need to do this for?
    I need this because I don't want to run a PXE server.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaddAussie View Post
    It doesn't do exactly what you want but this is the closest I can think of to what you want to do..

    http://www.i-odd.com/english/product/iodd2501.php

    Its basically a US ESATA HDD that you can copy ISO's on to and then select which one you would like to boot from, also some of the remote management cards allow you to boot a machine from a networked ISO image
    Excellent, this is perfect!

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. How to ask an anonymous question?
    By Allen in forum General Discussion
    Replies: 26
    Last Post: 03-12-2009, 02:36 PM
  2. Creationist question on GCSE Biology exam
    By JPreston in forum General Discussion
    Replies: 17
    Last Post: 06-07-2009, 08:35 PM
  3. Extremely slow delivery
    By voltlight in forum SCAN.care@HEXUS
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 08-04-2009, 03:55 PM
  4. Network Files Transfer Question
    By milanlad in forum Networking and Broadband
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 01-04-2005, 06:46 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •