[wplug] PXE Netboot

Brian A. Seklecki bseklecki at collaborativefusion.com
Fri Dec 5 07:44:51 EST 2008


On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 17:16 -0500, Roland Hess wrote:
> For a personal project, I'm trying to learn netbooting via PXE (using 
> DHCP on the server side, not BOOTP). My eventual goal is to be able to 
> netboot machines into a live (non-HD installed) Ubuntu server 

It takes about a 5 minutes to setup on FreeBSD, less on NetBSD where the
bootloader isn't insane.

You flick on TFTP daemon, DHCP, and NFS server.

Hardware gets a DHCP address lease; Lease tells it where to TFTP its
stage 1 & stage 2 x86 boot loader.  PXE code on the NIC TFTPs it down
and hands it to the BIOS for boot.

Stage 1 loader has sufficient NFS capabilities to mount the root file
system and load the kernel.

After that, you've got the 30-year old debate on how to split a POSIX
file system across network and local resources.

I recommend killing yourself and/or avoiding UDP NFS on gigabit
Ethernet.


~BAS
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