User manual

Etherboot User Manual
No Warranty or Support: Etherboot comes with NO warranties of any kind. It is hoped that it will be
useful to you, but NO responsibility is accepted for any outcome of using it. Etherboot also comes with
NO support, although you may get helpful advice from the mailing lists listed on the Etherboot home
page.
2.3. What hardware is supported?
See Appendix A for a list of supported NICs. All Etherboot drivers are autoprobing, which means they
attempt to detect the hardware addresses at which the card is installed. It’s fairly easy to write a driver if
you know C and are familiar with Ethernet hardware interfacing. Please read the developer manual
(../devman/t1.html) if you wish to do so.
2.4. Getting help
Please join the Etherboot mailing lists (http://sourceforge.net/projects/etherboot). These are listed on the
Etherboot home page. There is a users mailing list and a developers mailing list. The users list is for
issues with building and running the software, while the developers list is for issues with features and
coding.
Please post questions or bug reports to the Etherboot mailing lists, please do not mail me, because: 1. you
get the benefit of a lot of experts seeing your question (no, I don’t know everything, if only because there
are many configurations I have never used); 2. a lot of people see the question and answer and this helps
them too; 3. I have other demands on my time, like a job, and answering individual email is an
unsustainable practice. You will probably not get any reply from me if you email me directly. I want to
make the best use of my time and that is by making sure that as many people as possible see the
questions and answers. Note that I will post my replies to the mailing lists so to see the answers you
should subscribe, or be willing to check the archives later.
On the other hand, if you have a code or document contribution, then email to me is definitely
appropriate. Please ask first before you send large files. Diffs are preferred to entire archives. If you are
really keen to volunteer, and have the skills, ask to join the developer team.
Other lists you can join are the Linux Terminal Server Project mailing lists at LTSP
(http://www.ltsp.org/). The LTSP list is focused more on the LTSP packages. However there is a fair
amount of overlap between the lists and many key people are on all lists.
3. Unpacking, compiling and testing the package
3.1. A short cut to getting Etherboot images
Marty Connor has set up a web form (http://rom-o-matic.net/) for creating an Etherboot image on the fly
and returning it as the output of the form. If all you want is an Etherboot image, this could save you
having to build the distribution.
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