NetBoot

NetBoot is a technology from Apple that enables New World ROM Macs to boot from a network.

A disk image with a copy of Mac OS X or Mac OS 8/9 is stored on a server (typically Mac OS X Server). Clients receive this image across a network using many popular protocols including but not limited to: HTTPS, AFP, NFS, and Multicast ASR. Server-side NetBoot image can boot entire machines, although NetBoot is more commonly used for Operating System and software deployment, somewhat similar to Norton Ghost.

To NetBoot a client machine, hold N as the Macintosh boots.

The transition to Intel has not affected NetBoot. Both Intel and PowerPC-based Servers can serve images for Intel and PowerPC based clients.

NetBoot was first announced as a part of Mac OS X Server 1.0 at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 5, 1999.

Make any Mac a NetBoot Server

http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/hardware/make_any_mac_a_netboot_server

Have you ever thought that having that emergency partition on your desktop was hackish and ugly? Or have you thought that it would be truly handy to have a boot DVD available via NetBoot for recovery purposes? Well, good news, Mac OS X can act as a NetBoot server just as well as Mac OS X Server itself can. All a Mac needs to NetBoot is a server running TFTP and either NFS or HTTP, and all are built in to a normal Mac OS X machine.

In fact, any machine that can serve those basic protocols can be a NetBoot server. The reason one would prefer a Mac for this is because Apple has a protocol called Boot Service Discovery Protocol (BSDP) that it built into its bootpd server. While this is not strictly required for NetBoot, it is the protocol that makes the image show up in the Startup Disk preference pane and that simply makes life easier (you'll see how much easier when I explain the alternative). Even better, Apple went as far as to document most of how to do this process in the manpage for bootpd. Some things are missing, but I hope this guide will clear those things up. And for good measure, I'll show you how to do this without having to use BSDP at all (Debian NetBoot server, anyone?).

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