Documentation for netboot [was Re: Proposal to drop Ubuntu alternate CDs for 12.10]

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 12:54:11AM -0400, Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 6:41 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> [...]
> > I would just say that, at least the last time I tried to do a netboot, it
> > wasn't easy.  The documentation was difficult to find, somewhat out of date,
> > and didn't describe exactly what and where to download the necessary bits and
> > pieces.
> >
> > It's been a little while so I don't remember the details, but maybe part of
> > the task of dropping the alt CDs should include reviewing the available
> > documentation for netboot and mini ISO for up-to-dated-ness.
> 
> Yes, absolutely.
> 
> I played with this a bit, and it's actually not too difficult to do
> from just any Ubuntu desktop, provided you have the ISO image for what
> you want to provide. This is one place where having dnsmasq installed
> on all desktops is really useful ;)
> 
> I'll take a look at the docs and at least add the few commands I came
> up with to setup a netboot server, it's a matter of three or four
> commands, and IIRC no extra packages to install from a brand new
> desktop install.

Let's be clear that using the "netboot" mini.iso doesn't require setting
up a netboot server; you just need to download the image you want from
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/ and burn it to a CD / write it to a
USB stick as normal.  For refugees from the alternate CD, this is likely
to be a more comfortable approach than setting up a netboot server.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]