Has anyone attempted or considered the possibility of having a PXE boot server over the mesh?
Realizing that it would slow, it would however be possible to load a small and customized operating system that resides completely within the computers ram, such as puppy linux (Which is a very usable distro). Any linux distro that didn't operate solely in ram would end up reaching back to the server creating a thin client situation which wouldn't be practical.
Realizing that it would slow, it would however be possible to load a small and customized operating system that resides completely within the computers ram, such as puppy linux (Which is a very usable distro). Any linux distro that didn't operate solely in ram would end up reaching back to the server creating a thin client situation which wouldn't be practical.
This group is pretty singularly focused on helping groups implement what we have for emcomm purposes. There are a lot of distractions that would be interesting to pursue. But we saw BBHN get hung-up on tinkering and we don't want to get stuck in that rut.
Having said that, I do see how your suggestion would be cool.
Andre, K6AH
AREDN Project Manager
From an emergency management standpoint. What I was really looking at would be a custom and universal set of software for a particular emergency response group. A standard toolkit if you will. Where upon boot, the browser would open with the standard and preconfigured set of bookmarks/homepages etc...while perhaps next upon boot the irc client comes on line pre-configured for the current server. Basically, you could get someone up and running and configured within the time it takes to boot. Further, as the situation and communications structure changed, the boot images could be updated, leaving out the need for everyone and their dog to have to change their settings as these changes occur. Finally, this would cut out the need and extra hassle for dedicated laptops, where with the PXE boot image, the individual volunteers could use any modern laptop without having to burden it with additional and sometimes unnecessary software, since the linux distro would not interfere with the already installed OS of user laptop's owner.
Just some thoughts.