How to setup lan boot

[JohnArgent]

OK I am stuck, I have never tried this but it seems my only option,
I have a couple of laptops with broken cd drives, they will not boot
from USB but will lan boot. I have no idea how to set this up does
someone think they can walk me thru this.
I would greatly appreciate it.

Primary machine is running 2010.12

the two old tough books are running XP want to set them up to dual boot

[muungwana]

what do you mean by "lan boot"?

My understanding of it says its causing a computer to boot up by sending it some sort of network traffic from another computer. I dont think this is what you want.

If you want to install a linux distro without using a live cd running from a cd-rom drive or from a usb stick then you will need to do that using a technique called "poor man's install"

here is a link that can help you do that: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=59127.0

i have never done what the link says so i cant say anything about the difficulty level of the process

[melodie]

Hi muungwana,
I think it is precisely what JohnArgent wants to do. lan boot is also called PXE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment

I never tried this method. I have used poor man install before, when the distro has been setup for it, it's a matter of knowing a little the filesystem and being careful in following instructions. For PXE it might be about the same : the distro has to have been setup in a way that allows it... this is just a guess, I might mistake about that.

Regards,
Mélodie

[pags]

I've not done this in PCLOS (it's one of those "one of these days" projects  ).

Try searching "pxe" in Synaptic (cobbler, drbl and gpxe seem relevant, here).  Also, look into terminal-server2.

[JohnArgent]

Actually PXE is exactly what i am looking for, I looked at the poor mans install
but it looks like you already have to have linux and grub installed, I did find after looking that Unetbootin may work will give it a try, thanks for the suggestions

JohnArgent