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On 20/08/13 18:36, Daniel Robinson wrote: > Hello chaps, > > Started a new job today and had great fun smashing up the old Comet in > Marsh Barton =) > > I managed to find a rather nice looking PC, Tied it to my bicycle with 3m > Network Cables and cycled it home. =) > > Always the type of person who likes to try something new, I was wondering > if it is possible to install Linux on to a remote machine. By remote I mean > another computer on my LAN. And if it is possible what sort of things do I > need to do to achieve this? > > This lovely little PC will be my future file server so any tips on Distro > choices would be great but I fear I will lean towards Debian... again... You've got a fair old mission ahead of you here chief: you'll need to start with a new dedicated server-style VM instance for you to attempt setup as an install box. Debian is fine, and you can keep using VBox as your hypervisor as it's simple, you already know it and it works fine. Recommended reading: http://www.howtoforge.com/setting-up-a-pxe-install-server-for-multiple-linux-distributions-on-debian-lenny http://www.howtoforge.com/setting-up-a-pxe-install-server-on-ubuntu-9.10 Both are slightly out-of-date, but largely everything has stayed the same - PXE booting is luckily an old art, not much changes over the years. This is newer and specific to Wheezy: http://funwithlinux.net/2013/01/debian-wheezy-pxe-server/ Make sure the network boot/PXE stuff is enabled properly in the BIOS of any potential client machine. Make sure your switch isn't crappy and flaking out (crap network cards + switches are the biggest source of PXE failures). Lastly, you're going to have to rearrange part of your network infrastructure - don't run two DHCP servers on the same subnet so you're either going to have to disable your router's internal DHCP (which will screw up your non-static wifi clients) and enable a permanently running proper server with DHCP for the LAN, or temporarily disable your router DHCP and enable the PXE server's DHCP only when you want to perform a network boot. It's highly unlikely your router's DHCP will allow you to set required options like "bootp server address", for example. There are other options including overlapping DHCP ranges, different scopes/servers for different subnets/VLANs, etc, but those are all a lot more complicated than you're going to want to dive on your first try. Good luck and don't forget to come back with any questions of course. Regards -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq