I'm looking for a good way to deploy Red Hat Linux 8.0 and Windows 2000. Right now I've got two servers, one using Kickstart and the other using RIS. These are each completely independent systems and only one can be live at a time. My world would be a better place if I could find a good way to consolidate this operation to one server instead. In the best of all worlds, a single server would handle the startup using PXE and give the option to select which system I would like to install, something similar to what RIS does. Does anyone know if this is even possible? Short of that, I'm thinking what might work would be a method where PXE is used for RIS, which I *think* requires a Windows server, and a boot floppy is used for Kickstart. With this, I would still want to retrieve the ks.cfg file and the CD images from the Windows box if possible. Is it though? Worst case, I would see myself having two servers, one performing the install for each OS type. This isn't too far from what I have now. As mentioned above though, I'm currently only able to use one or the other, not both at the same time. If I could turn DNS and DHCP over to one of the boxes exclusively, and somehow direct PXE to the appropriate install (or use the PXE/floppy combination), it would still be a big improvement over what I'm doing. So, I tried doing the last method yesterday, with the PXE/floppy combination. The Windows install works as normal if I select it. If I let PXE fail and the system moves to the floppy to boot, things start as expected. Soon after, something goes haywire though. I had edited the configuration for the ks label with ks=nfs:10.1.1.2:/RHimage/ks.cfg to try and get the ks.cfg file from the same location as my Red Hat 8 CD images. It seems to be getting an address from the Windows DHCP server and attempting to mount the filesystem. Instead of getting ks.cfg, the system starts asking questions. Looking at the F3 screen, it says the following: ks server: 10.1.1.2:/RHimage file: ks.cfg kickstarting through device eth0 53 keymaps available loaded 9 keymaps sending DHCP request nodns is 0 revers name lookup failed mounting nfs path ks:/RHimage mount failed, retrying after 3 seconds sleep mount failed, retrying after 3 seconds sleep mount failed, retrying after 3 seconds sleep It stops at that point unless I start answering the questions. So, the mount failed. And, for some odd reason it does a DHCP request though it's already gotten an address from the DHCP server (twice already actually, but that's counting the PXE, so a total of three DHCP transactions). I thought that maybe the reverse name lookup was important, so I threw the configuration for a name and IP into the Windows DNS server. The results were as follows: ks server: 10.1.1.2:/RHimage file: ks.cfg failed to mount 10.11.11.2:/RHimage Oddly, it appears to fail sooner when the reverse lookup works than when it fails. I also find it odd that if I start answering the questions and tell it use NFS, then tell it the server name and the file location, it mounts perfectly. So, anyone want to take a stab at what's going wrong here? Thanks, Robert Robert Nielsen Systems Manager Computer and Information Sciences East Tennessee State University Nielsen@xxxxxxxx
