Hi all,
I want to know that how can i use NBD(Network block device) to boot diskless machine?
How NBD works and how can i implement it on windows? What architecture like diff. drivers or services would be required to implement?
Can i get some material over NBD (Some thread on OSR)?
Thanks in anticipation!
Hi all,
Can someone please elaborate over mentioned query?
Please guide for the same.
Thanks in anticipation!!
good luck porting this from linux.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@hotmail.com
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 5:39 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Network block Device
Hi all,
I want to know that how can i use NBD(Network block device) to boot
diskless machine?
How NBD works and how can i implement it on windows? What architecture
like diff. drivers or services would be required to implement?
Can i get some material over NBD (Some thread on OSR)?
Thanks in anticipation!
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars
To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
Yes, good luck !
You will have to build a boot driver, integrate with PnP and power management… If you are new to Windows device driver development, it will certainly take a long time to achieve. If you are an experimented Windows driver developer, knowing perfectly well the PnP, power, network and storage device driver development, you might have a prototype in one to three years.
You can also try one of the 2 existing products that offer the same kind of feature.
One of the best existing diskless/remote-boot solutions for Windows client is HP Neoware Image Manager. It is not free but if you have less than few years to implement your solution, you should consider a commercial product…
HTH
Is bootability a requirement ?
If not, will ISCSI help ?
Harish
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@vivigatt.com [mailto:xxxxx@vivigatt.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:04 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Network block Device
Yes, good luck !
You will have to build a boot driver, integrate with PnP and power
management… If you are new to Windows device driver development, it
will certainly take a long time to achieve. If you are an experimented
Windows driver developer, knowing perfectly well the PnP, power, network
and storage device driver development, you might have a prototype in one
to three years.
You can also try one of the 2 existing products that offer the same kind
of feature.
One of the best existing diskless/remote-boot solutions for Windows
client is HP Neoware Image Manager. It is not free but if you have less
than few years to implement your solution, you should consider a
commercial product…
HTH
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars
To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
Thanks For your reply.
Well booting diskless machine using NBD is requirement.
I am not too good in Driver Dev. of windows. I have little exp.of the same.
I know that boot loader is first component which diskless m/c receives from server. Once This boot loader executes, it should get image in parts from server.
I know i need Disk filter driver to manage reads/writes on remote disk and a network filter driver to communicate with remote server to perform i/o on remote disk.
On server side, network filter driver will be present which basically map request coming from diff. clients to disk and may need disk filter driver.
I am not sure whether miniport driver will require for virtual scsi HBA.
Well i may be missing some component for this solution, but still i would like to know sequence of operations between these components should happen. The order in which these component should communicate with each other?
Well if someone can guide for the same, will be appreciated.
Thanks in anticipation.
Why don’t you just use iSCSI for booting ?
Both Intel and Broadcom NICs (and perhaps others) have ROM extensions
that can be loaded on to the NIC to connect to an iSCSI target on
power up (readily and freely available as downloads from their support sites).
The Microsoft iSCSI initiator with boot support can be accessed via
Microsoft Connect. The Intel and Broadcom extensions conform to a
boot specification created by Microsoft that allows the handover of
the iSCSI session details when control is passed to the O/S during
boot. For you to try to design your own version of this potentially
complex process is madness.
What you seem to be thinking of is, as has said before, years and
years of work. And for what ? So you can re-invent the wheel ?
Mark.
At 07:45 27/06/2008, xxxxx@hotmail.com wrote:
Thanks For your reply.
Well booting diskless machine using NBD is requirement.
I am not too good in Driver Dev. of windows. I have little exp.of the same.
I know that boot loader is first component which diskless m/c
receives from server. Once This boot loader executes, it should get
image in parts from server.
I know i need Disk filter driver to manage reads/writes on remote
disk and a network filter driver to communicate with remote server
to perform i/o on remote disk.
On server side, network filter driver will be present which
basically map request coming from diff. clients to disk and may need
disk filter driver.
I am not sure whether miniport driver will require for virtual scsi HBA.Well i may be missing some component for this solution, but still i
would like to know sequence of operations between these components
should happen. The order in which these component should communicate
with each other?Well if someone can guide for the same, will be appreciated.
Thanks in anticipation.
> Well booting diskless machine using NBD is requirement.
Then you need a BIOS which supports NBD client function on this hardware. This
is not a Windows question.
–
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com
Many bios already support PXE. I cannot fathom why yet another network boot
loader would be a worthwhile product. PXE could load the OS image containing
the NBD disk support. But as others have noted, this wheel does not need
re-invention.
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Maxim S. Shatskih
wrote:
> > Well booting diskless machine using NBD is requirement.
>
> Then you need a BIOS which supports NBD client function on this hardware.
> This
> is not a Windows question.
>
> –
> Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
> StorageCraft Corporation
> xxxxx@storagecraft.com
> http://www.storagecraft.com
>
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>
–
Mark Roddy
Hi all,
Thanks for your response.
Now i have scenario in which am planning to have NBD server on linux and clients are windows machine. NBD Server is already implemented on linux. Now if i have a client (Diskless) who wants to boot from this NBD server i need to develope NBD client (only) on windows.
Thanks!
Can someone please share their thought over mentioned query?
Can someone please share their thoughts over this query?
shashank singh wrote:
Can someone please share their thoughts over this query?
Yes, my thoughts are that you are reissuing your query far too rapidly for my tastes.
> Now i have scenario in which am planning to have NBD server on linux and clients are windows >machine.
NBD Server is already implemented on linux. Now if i have a client (Diskless) who wants to boot from
this NBD server i need to develope NBD client (only) on windows
Are you sure you understand what you are talking about??? Look - there are 2 distinct possibilities:
Both client and server run their operating systems (that may be different from one another) locally, so that they communicate with one another.
Clent does not have its own OS, so that it loads its OS image from the server.
Therefore, if you have Linux NBS server and diskless client, this client is going to have a remote Linux session…
In other words, your post can be titled like “I plan to do something, but I don’t know what exactly I want to do”…
Anton Bassov
Anton,
Your posting is confusing. On can make a network block device such
that a Linux server loads a Windows client image and acts as its disk. Many
of the iSCSI systems are exactly that, and there are firms that have
developed headless diskless systems where the I/O processor that handles all
the I/O processor runs Linux and the system runs Windows.
What the OP is not getting is the huge amount of work this is. That
is why several people have already posted suggesting PXE or iSCSI, since
rolling your own is many man-years of work.
–
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr
Remove StopSpam to reply
wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
>> Now i have scenario in which am planning to have NBD server on linux and
>> clients are windows >machine.
>> NBD Server is already implemented on linux. Now if i have a client
>> (Diskless) who wants to boot from
>> this NBD server i need to develope NBD client (only) on windows
>
> Are you sure you understand what you are talking about??? Look - there are
> 2 distinct possibilities:
>
> 1. Both client and server run their operating systems (that may be
> different from one another) locally, so that they communicate with one
> another.
>
> 2. Clent does not have its own OS, so that it loads its OS image from the
> server.
>
> Therefore, if you have Linux NBS server and diskless client, this client
> is going to have a remote Linux session…
>
> In other words, your post can be titled like “I plan to do something, but
> I don’t know what exactly I want to do”…
>
>
> Anton Bassov
>
>
>
Thanks Don.
Well i know that it’s huge work. But what i need to focus on is windows NBD client. There are NBD client work in user mode, and i can use them as reference. What i think is i can have NBD server on linux and it will expose some disk which will hold some image. Now on client, boot loader will be fetched from server and it will be executed. This boot loader will take basic ntldr from server which will get OS image. This image holds network and miniport driver which will take over the control.
This is good assignment for learning.
Please share your thoughts over this learning assignment.
Thanks!
Actually you have to hook the BIOS for a number of functions, since NTLDR
uses the BIOS to read the disk, to a point where the system brings up OS.
And in the OS you need a mini-port driver that looks like SCSI but talks out
the network. All of this in addition to an intial boot loader. The efforts
I know where many man-years.
–
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr
Remove StopSpam to reply
wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> Thanks Don.
> Well i know that it’s huge work. But what i need to focus on is windows
> NBD client. There are NBD client work in user mode, and i can use them as
> reference. What i think is i can have NBD server on linux and it will
> expose some disk which will hold some image. Now on client, boot loader
> will be fetched from server and it will be executed. This boot loader will
> take basic ntldr from server which will get OS image. This image holds
> network and miniport driver which will take over the control.
>
> This is good assignment for learning.
> Please share your thoughts over this learning assignment.
>
> Thanks!
>
xxxxx@hotmail.com wrote:
> Now i have scenario in which am planning to have NBD server on linux and clients are windows >machine.
> NBD Server is already implemented on linux. Now if i have a client (Diskless) who wants to boot from
> this NBD server i need to develope NBD client (only) on windowsAre you sure you understand what you are talking about??? Look - there are 2 distinct possibilities:
Both client and server run their operating systems (that may be different from one another) locally, so that they communicate with one another.
Clent does not have its own OS, so that it loads its OS image from the server.
Therefore, if you have Linux NBS server and diskless client, this client is going to have a remote Linux session…
In other words, your post can be titled like “I plan to do something, but I don’t know what exactly I want to do”…
Are you sure you understand what you are talking about? The client loads
its OS image from the server. That image can contain anything the
administrator/developer wishes. The OS running on the server is entirely
irrelevant as long as some means is available to get suitable boot
images onto it.
>have a client (Diskless) who wants to boot from this NBD server i need to
Can the client’s BIOS boot from NBD?
–
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com
> This is good assignment for learning.
Please share your thoughts over this learning assignment.
If the BIOS on the client cannot boot from NBD - then the client cannot boot
from NBD, regardless of what will you develop in Windows.
iSCSI bootable cards have the special BIOS on them to boot.
–
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com