# Raw disk access through network

## fernandoc1

I wish to access a hard disk that is located in a remote machine in the same way that I access local hard disks in /dev/sd*.

My idea is boot a machine with a live cd, map it's hard disk to another machine and from there use cfdisk to create the partitions, format the partitions and etc, like if I had access to a link in my machine to the /dev/hda file in the other machine.

I don't know if it is useful, but I'm curious to this, because it would enable me to some cool things here, like install an OS remotely, through a virtual machine and other sorts of things like this.

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## chiefbag

Why don't you just boot with a livecd and ssh to the box, thats the easiest way of doing a remote install.

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## xming

You should look into AoE.

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## fernandoc1

 *chiefbag wrote:*   

> Why don't you just boot with a livecd and ssh to the box, thats the easiest way of doing a remote install.

 

I wanna try something more complicated in order to know a little more about thing that I haven't tried yet.

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## aztech

This is easy to do if your remote machine can serve you iSCSI

and if you have an iSCSI initiator on the liveCD.

edit: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/ISCSI

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## fernandoc1

Is it possible to create a link in the other machine that redirects all read/write commands to the other machine?

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## aztech

 *fernandoc1 wrote:*   

> Is it possible to create a link in the other machine that redirects all read/write commands to the other machine?

 

Can you explain?

Basicly what iSCSI does ...

Target: a NAS/SAN/Server/Computer that can share a folder, or a whole harddrive vie ethernet as a raw blockdevice to a client (initiator)

Initiator: a daemon running on the clientmachine, to "initiate" a connection to a iSCSI target.

The initiator is using the target by sending lowlevel SCSI/ATA commands över ethernet, to access the shared device/folder.

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## fernandoc1

Hehehehe, many thanks for your support.

I have done what I was thinking.

Here is a document of what I've done to make things work, using Ubuntu.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1GlBEpdgGX39nBMmUt4iendIrQOLP9KSkNbNfxtburoo

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