[syslinux] Network disk? (like memdisk but over the network)

[H. Peter Anvin]

Adam Nielsen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've successfully got DOS booting over PXE with Memdisk, but as RAM is
> severely limited in the PCs I'm using (only 32-64MB) I can't load a huge
> Memdisk image to run large DOS programs, Windows, etc.
> 
> Are there any programs out there like Memdisk, but instead of storing
> the disk in RAM they read it over the network?  (A "netdisk" program.) 
> This would be a really useful lightweight solution, as it's pretty
> painful trying to mount a network drive through DOS for the same sort of
> thing.
> 

I think there is one called "Netware", made by the same company that 
makes SuSE Linux.  ;)  I there is also an open source version of the 
server called MARS-NWE, http://www.compu-art.de/mars_nwe/; apparently 
there is also a set of clients available.

In all seriousness, though, it's actually not really that much harder to 
write a network filesystem client for DOS than it's to write a netdisk 
program, so I suspect that it really wouldn't make much sense.

The sick part is that I've actually written a server like that (it 
didn't use the network, it used a different communications mechanism), 
but I wrote it for hire and can't release it.  It would have to be 
ported to use the network, anyway.

	-hpa