AoE - ATA over Ethernet

Classic/“normal” Operating systems, like:

  • many Linux releases
  • DOS
  • Windows 1.0 - 3.11
  • Windows 9x

…just need the Interrupt 13 to run and to do file operations, such as:

  • loading Operating system components and booting the Operating System itself
  • writing log files
  • reading settings
  • loading drivers

So, the EtherBoot currently supported protocols:

  • TFTP
  • FSP
  • NFS
  • HTTP

provide a certain environment level, which is adequate and sufficient to boot the operating systems mentioned above.


New Operating systems, like Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 require a more in-depth hard disk environment.

In contrast to the default EtherBoot supported protocols the ATA over Ethernet specification additionally provides/emulates all necessary components for Operating Systems which require an in-depth hard disk / hard disk controller environment[…]

Chart / Diagram

Directory or hard disk (or hard disk image) containg an installed Operating System

|

AoE Server

|
|
| ⇐ network connection
|
|

Client

|

EtherBoot binary with AoE support

|

Boot priority set to "EtherBoot" in the BIOS setup menu

|

EtherBoot with AoE support will be used as boot device

|

EtherBoot with AoE support provides in-depth hard disk environment and loads the Operating System from the harddisk from the AoE Server.

AoE server applications for Linux/Unix

AoE server applications for Windows/DOS

…article will be continued

AoE state of development in EtherBoot

zpxe files have been handed out to demonstrate successful AoE boot. A RTL8139.zpxe demo file has been published by Michael Brown. A prebuilt Fedora 5 hard disk image can also be downloaded.

To get you started, retrieve those files (you will need a RTL8139 card in the client). Setup DHCP reasonably (so the .zpxe file will be loaded). Download the virtual hard drive blade server (or use a real AoE capable drive, of course).

Running

vbladed 0 0 eth0 aoedemo.img

you should be able to boot the client into Fedora.

This is proof-of-concept only, and the code is only in developer codetree yet.


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