Install using Pxe?

NutJob

Laptop with no cd drive and has taken a heavy beating and want to get linux on it.


Is this hard to do with debian i have tftp and the dns service setup but have difficulty figureing out what it needs to bootstrap ?

Has anyone done this in the past few years?

niallb

Hi Nutjob,
yes. I've used PXE installs over the last few months with Ubuntu and Redhat Enterprise. I've also set up network install for sparcs on openbsd.

You'll need to have a dhcp service set up to answer the machine's request
for an IP address, and what file to get.

You'll need to set up your dhcpd.conf something like this:

authoritative;
ddns-update-style none;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        # default gateway
        option routers 192.168.1.254;
        option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;

        option domain-name "example.com";
        option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.254;

        range dynamic-bootp 192.168.1.193 192.168.1.224;
        default-lease-time 21600;
        max-lease-time 43200;
        next-server 192.168.1.200; # Not essential
        filename "pxelinux.0";

}

Install pxelinux on the server, and set up a default configuration
something like this. This is what I used for Redhat, and it includes a kickstart. An ubuntu example is below.

[i]# /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default.cfg[/i]
default linux
label linux
  kernel RedHat_ES/vmlinuz
  append load_ramdisk=1  initrd=initrd.img ide0=noprobe ide1=noprobe ks=nfs:192.168.1.200:/export/RedHat_ES/kickstart/ks.cfg \ ramdisk_size=268235456 apm=off acpi=off pci=noacpi

label ubuntu
        kernel ubuntu-installer/i386/linux
        append vga=normal initrd=ubuntu-installer/i386/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=14972 root=/dev/rd/0 rw  --

prompt 1
timeout 0

This assumes a directory layout like this
/var/tftpboot/ubuntu-installer/i386
/var/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
with tftpd serving from the /var/tftpboot directory.
The ubuntu-installer structure can be found
under /install/netboot on an ubuntu CD,
and the equivalent easily found on a debian mirror.


pxelinux allows you set up a menu of different install options.
A handy one is to make grub available over tftp, so that if you've
a system with a non booting disk, you can at least boot to a boot loader via PXE and try to sort it out.

If you still have problems, get a copy of tcpdump and see what files the machine is looking for. Match those up with the errors from tftpd,
and you'll soon sort out the paths.


Hope that gets you a bit further,
have fun!
NiallB