It can't be denied; NetBoot is cool. Even though Apple's network startup technology is mostly aimed at big educational and corporate deployments, it can be helpful in a small gaggle of Macs as a tool for diagnostic boot or machine imaging. There's a price to be paid, though: by default, you need Mac OS X Server (starting at $499 retail for a 10-client license) to provide the various bits of plumbing needed for a successful NetBoot deployment.Enter Jeff McCune of Ohio State, with help from Christopher Suleski at Rutgers. Sensing the inherent injustice in this situation, Jeff has written up a thorough guide to getting NetBoot working with a Linux server, using the CentOS distribution and a slew of open source tools. While previous guides have tackled NetBooting OS 9 clients from a Linux server, this is the first I've seen that addresses OS X for both PPC and Intel machines. Grab an old PC with two Ethernet cards and you're on your way to NetBoot nirvana.
Keep in mind that this is not a project for the faint of heart or wary of the CLI. As McCune indicates on his wiki, even experienced UNIX admins would probably spend a few hours getting everything just right. Compare your time cost vs. the old G4 tower you could probably draft into service and the price of a 10.4 Server 10-user license... you do the math.
[via Macenterprise.org mailing list]
Update 3:30 pm Sat: "Read" link corrected below via tinyurl (it's HTTPS, so it has to be redirected).
Of all the people
who could create a Universal OS X boot disk (*cough* Apple *cough*), is anyone surprised that MacOSXHints (as
far as I know) got there first? Top it off with the fact that they also created a NetBoot image and, well... now
they're just making everyone else look bad (*cough!*).
For today's TUAW
Tip, I thought I'd cover some of the basic essentials for starting up your Mac, especially for recent switchers who feel
naked and lost without their BIOS. I compiled the list I have here from 
