Network install over wireless

[Sam Varshavchik]

It's been my experience that, in recent past, DVD drives -- especially 
laptop ones -- have become less and less reliable. I burned an F10 install 
DVD one one server. The DVD passes media check on one laptop. On a 
different, older laptop, media check kept failing, eventually it wouldn't 
even boot. So that DVD drive is probably shot, but that's the point. This is 
what the race to the lowest-cost supplier ended up with.

I can always install the pxeboot initrd and vmlinuz images off the 
installation media, boot them via grub, and do a network install. But that 
seems to work only with wired Ethernet.

Given that issues with wireless firmware have, apparently, been squared away 
recently (at least for some wireless hardware), would it be possible to add 
the necessary firmware files to the install image, together with the 
wireless kernel modules? If so, it would be possible to activate the 
wireless card, pick an access point, and supply the key. Once the IP address 
is obtained from DHCP, the existing network install should then work just 
fine, over the wireless.

I don't seem to remember hearing about any distro being able to install over 
wireless. It would be quite a hoot.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20081127/38d4f963/attachment-0001.sig>