Diskless boot is not worth a headache

Over the past 8 months I have been working on a project to enable diskless boot on a thin client I own. I’m going to preface this by saying, it’s not worth the time and effort I put into it.

I tried 2 different ways to run a diskless boot solution. The first one used Microsoft’s own services and products, more specifically iSCSI targeting, and WDS (Windows Deployment Services), which didn’t work as intended.

The second solution used a third-party tool called CCBoot which is known for their TFTP/iSCSI targeting. That solution worked fine up until it came to booting the Operating System. I could boot ISOs with no issues, but VHDs (which it does support) did not work, at all, without running into an error. In Windows it was BOOT_MEDIA_INACCESSIBLE, which means it got to the splash screen, sat there for 5 minutes, and then gave up and crashed.

The network was configured correctly, and was able to boot from the media, but the handoff in Windows wasn’t working. Linux on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any major issues. Some distros didn’t play nice, while others worked like a charm.

Moral of the story, stick to bootable media such as USB Flash Drives and Deployment tools.

I’ll continue to explore these solutions, but for now, I’ll stick to what I have.