PXE -> NBD -> Install Fedora?

[Andy Green]

Hi -

Slightly unusual situation, my main terminal is currently a fanless 
EPIA motherboard with a fanless PSU and no HDD.  (The reason is the 
complete silence.)

It boots over the network using PXE and mounts using NBD a 2G ext3 
image stored in a file on the server.  NBD is the Network Block 
Device, a feature of the kernel that allows a remote file to appear 
to be a local block device.

The 2G image is initialized mainly with RH9 RPMS via some custom 
scripts at creation time on the server, this gives a working KDE 
desktop and is working fine.

Rather than duplicate this effort for Fedora, I saw somebody mention 
PXE being supported during Fedora install.... but is NBD supported by 
the Fedora install?  This would allow the remote filesystem to be 
initialized from the client exactly as if it was a local drive and do 
away with the need to prep the filesystem on the server at all.

NBD is mainly in the (stock, no patches needed) kernel, but you need 
to run a small userland app on the server and client to point them at 
each other.

-Andy