Is it at all possible to use a hard drive on the network as my main hd

[jimicrackcorn]

So my problem is I have a laptop with no hard drive and I can't really afford another right now so I though, why couldn't I just use one over the network?

I've explored a few options but right now I'm running a live cd(knoppix) and it seems there is a way to persistently store data, I'm not exactly sure if this would work over the network though.

Other than that it seems like it should be simple. I don't see any reason why I couldn't just get the kernel and everything into memory, from a disk or whatever and just map everything to the network hard drive.

From my understanding the boot process goes bios - boot loader - kernel. What I'm not sure of though is how the kernel interacts with the hardware, and therefore I'm unsure how to get it to the the networked drive as it's working drive. Once we have the kernel the what? How does it talk to the hard drive? I think I could figure out how to redirect it if I knew this.

Is there anyway at all to do this, short of coding something myself?

[Lazydog]

You could look at Network Booting Linux (PXE)

[jimicrackcorn]

You could look at Network Booting Linux (PXE)

I have tried doing the whole pxe thing but it seems most articles on it are a bit vague in one area or another. It makes trying to set it up a pain. Do you have any articles on it that are a little more concise? Step by step would be nice.

[Kloschüssel]

It depends on the linux distribution you're about to deploy. Try to refine your google search for "pxe boot" with the distribution you wanna use (i.e. "ubuntu").

LMGT4U