Re: Creating PXE boot image

Johann Klammer wrote:

lrhorer wrote:
I have PXE booting working from my Debian "Squeeze" server, and I can
What software package are you using? pxelinux?

Yes.

launch the Debian Network installer on a machine supporting PXE. I
can;t quite figure out how to create a boot image from a connfigured
Linux workstation, though. IOW, I have a workstation with a hard
disk installed that has Debian configured and working the way I want,
with
all the right utilities and device drivers. How can I take that
system and create an image that will boot on diskless workstations
running PXE? If it matters, the workstation is using GRUB to boot
Linux. I don;t require this to be the case for the diskless clients,
but I don't mind, either, as long as everything loads properly.

If you mean that you want to transfer _the_whole_ file system when
booting.

Yeah, that was the idea. I got the system to be under 100M,
uncompressed, and under 40M, compressed.

You could try to use the initial ram file system for doing this,
but you will need a _lot_ of ram for this and it may take a while for
large images.

A slightly saner approach would be mounting the root filesystem via
NFS.

The issue there is the system will fail if the link to the NFS server
fails. It's going to be a wireless link, and prone to failure. The
advantage of a network image boot is once the initrd is loaded, the PXE
system won't need the tftp server any longer.

Setting this up requires on the server:
A kernel, an initial ramdisk image(+NFS client), a pxe boot
image(syslinux's pxelinux works alright) which loads the kernel, a
tftp server for transferring the kernel image, a dhcp server for
setting up IP addresses, an NFS server to export the client's file
system... possibly more?

Yeah, I looked at this solution, but abandoned it because of the
inherent problems.

On the client(workstation):
A pxe compliant network card that is not too old,

There's no network card. This is an IOMEGA file server. It has two
built-in 1000M interfaces.

WARNING:
There are HOWTOs around which advise you to flash your card's BIOS
using a custom variant. This is not necessary for pxelinux.

Read the documentation for initramfs-tools and syslinux.

I got the system put together, and partially booting, but at some point
it would lock up. I'm not sure why. I finally gave up on the network
boot idea. Instead, I simply did a netboot of the Debian installer -
which is trivial - and loaded the OS on a USB Thumb Drive. The USB
drive will just have to remain attached to the system full time. I
implemented a number of procedures to limit the number of writes to the
flash drive, so hopefully the flash drive won't have to be replaced any
time soon.

Thanks, though.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/kNudnQ1Lv83Uz0bTnZ2dnUVZ5tmdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Creating PXE boot image
    ... Linux workstation, though. ... and create an image that will boot on diskless workstations running PXE? ... Setting this up requires on the server: ... A kernel, an initial ramdisk image, a pxe boot image(syslinux's pxelinux works alright) which loads the kernel, a tftp server for transferring the kernel image, a dhcp server for setting up IP addresses, an NFS server to export the client's file system... ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Computer freezes with linux-image-2.6.21-2
    ... during boot up? ... or after login? ... is a workstation or a server? ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Backup fails suspect VSS problem
    ... Will reboot and run a backup tonight and see what happens. ... The problem I have now is that the server appears to the customer to ... I don't even try to boot after swapping a motherboard. ... Could not access portions of directory System State\COM+ ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: RIS, same GUID, duplicates, Dell GX60s
    ... My first thought is the boot agent on the nic needs to be updated. ... these nics part of the motherboard or pci devices? ... It has to be run from a server and a floppy is created ... the nic drivers are not entirely correct, update the drivers in your RIS ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: Backup fails suspect VSS problem
    ... System State can be backed-up on its own fine! ... Kerry Brown ... The problem I have now is that the server appears to the customer to be ... I don't even try to boot after swapping a motherboard. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)