How does it work?

  1. Diskless computer (DC) broadcasts MAC address with bootp: Who am I?

  2. DHCP server on S looks up DB: Your IP address is X.X.X.X, your server is S, your boot file is vmlinuz.myname, etc.

  3. DC asks to load file from TFTP server on S: Please give me vmlinuz.myname

  4. S: Here you are (/tftpdir/vmlinuz.myname)

    DC thinks a while (booting Linux).

  5. DC: Please let me mount / with NFS

  6. DC: Please let me mount other NFSes (/usr, /home/, etc)

  7. S: Here you are

  8. DC: Runs intended application

Network boot ROM contains code to do 1 and 3.