System recovery over wired network

I just succeeded in recovering the original Acer Linpus Lite over the network, without using a USB-stick or a USB optical drive. Now I wonder whether it would be worth the effort to create a tutorial about it. Tell me if you're interested in how to recover your system over the network; if there's enough interest, I guess I'll post a guide. Don't expect to be an easy procedure for those new to Linux, though. You will need at least intermediate Linux experience.

For the more curious readers: the process involved using dhcp and tftp to get the laptop to boot PXE over the network, severely messing up Acer's ramdisk files to add network support, using an nfs share to provide network access to the files on the recovery DVD and making the recovery wizard use the nfs share instead of the cd.

 

Yes! I'm interested!

 

That actually sounds incredibly informative, I second that interest!

 

I'd love to have something like that. Saves me the trouble of making a recovery USB drive.

 

I'm also very interested.

I've spent quite a while trying to get RIS working with mine, however after the client installation screens I just get an "Waiting for reboot" error message flashing up quickly before the screen going blank and then the machine resetting after about 5 seconds. As the RIS installation is known to be working on other machines, I can only presume that Acer has done something funny to the PXE boot functionality of the RTL8101E, so any experiences with PXE in general would be appreciated. I should perhaps note that my One came with v.3114 preinstalled, so it's an ongoing issue.

 

Ok, you convinced me that there is enough interest =). I will see if I can find the time to write the guide next week. In the meanwhile, does anyone have some hosting space left for a ~100mb modified ramdisk?

Edit: Hmmm... Didn't expect to be so busy with my new study, I'll have to postpone this a few weeks, I guess.

 

Hi there

I try to install the Aspire One 150 over RIS but every time when the Setup want to loads the driver over the network the laptop crash and shutdown physical! Unfortunately it's not at one place it's absolutely random.

When i do the same with the windows xp cd its not a problem at all :/

any ideas what goes wrong?