Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.misc:13287 comp.sys.mac.comm:4311 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!hsdndev!bu.edu!buitc.bu.edu!ramdas From: ramdas@buitc.bu.edu (Ramdas Rao) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.comm Subject: Re: Tips for Macs on a student network Message-ID: <84119@bu.edu> Date: 19 Jun 91 13:19:38 GMT References: <1991Jun17.165139.575@groucho> Sender: news@bu.edu Reply-To: ramdas@buitc.bu.edu (Ramdas Rao) Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.misc Organization: Boston University Lines: 91 In article <1991Jun17.165139.575@groucho>, martyz@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu (Marty Zimmerman) writes: |> Any tips for setting up Macs (LCs in this case) on a network in a student lab? |> |> As far as I know, there is no way to have them boot from the network, but I |> would like to convice them to read their system folder from the net to speed |> things up a bit. Any advice in this area will be greatly appreciated. |> A couple of months ago, we did some research into setting up a public access Mac lab. We also were interested in having the Macs boot over the network. What we found was a product called, BootToob. Here's the info on the company. Mauswerks 1242 Neil Ave., Suite J Columbus, OH 43201 (614) 294-7300 What this product requires is that client Macs be Mac IIs (or one of the new Macs with a NuBus adapter) with a NuBus Ethernet card and at least 2 MB RAM. For the server, any Mac or UNIX machine with BOOTP will do. A BOOTP init for the Mac is provided. The product is a firmware and software solution. For each copy (I believe the list price/copy is $139), you get a ROM chip and software. The ROM replaces the ROM on Apple and Asante Ethernet cards. An included application is used to configure the Mac for remote booting as well as configuring the server on the net. BOOTP is used for the booting process, so, you could have a UNIX machine be the server. What the client Mac boots is an image of the system (and applications, if configured so). It is recommended that you limit this image to below 2MB. The RAM on the client becomes a RAM disk and the system is run from there. So, whatever the difference is between the RAM in the client and the image size is the amount of memory available to the user's application(s). In our implementation, we decided that the image would contain only the System s/w and the applications would be accessed from an AppleShare volume (either by inits in the System folder or manually by users). This made the image size about 1 MB in size. The clients took an average of 2 minutes to load this image and boot up. While the Lab has not as yet been set up, we decided that this would be the option we would choose instead of having local hard drives with various options for protection. |> The hardware: 10 Mac LCs with Ethertalk adaptors. The server is currently a |> Mac IIfx, but will eventually be a Mac IIci. We can use either System 7 or |> 6.0.7. |> |> -------------------------- |> Marty Zimmerman |> Computer Services |> University of Idaho |> Moscow, ID USA Once the client has booted, the Ethernet card is available to applications as a standard interface. This means that things like, NCSA telnet can use the Ethernet interface. So far, it sounds like everything you want right? Well, there are a couple of small catches, but, we didn't think they were big enough to prevent our use of this product. One of the problems, as mentioned earlier, is that it takes the client about 2 minutes to boot up. There was mixed opinions about this. A second problem is that the configured boot information can be altered if the Mac is booted from a floppy disk with a System file on it. This floppy would have to be inserted before the client booted from the server. What happens is that the Mac boots off the floppy and changes the PRAM to boot from the floppy by default instead of the network interface card. The easy (easier than restoring a corrupted disk, anyways) fix is to restore the PRAM to boot from the network interface card. This process takes about 45 seconds. Another advantage is that you could have as many System images as clients to customize each client or one image for all clients. It would be attractive to have one image that all Macs in a public access lab boot, so, a user can always restore the default environment from any Mac by simply rebooting. Hope this is of some use. ---Ram Das Rao Information Technology Boston University