Jason Kohles wrote:
On 11/17/05, *Mark Heslep* <mark@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:mark@xxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
An aside to your aside on PXE: I do the same when Im on a local net
where I control the DCHP server and can set the 'next server'
pointer to
my PXE server. On that server I have archived dozens of linux
flavors,
Knoppix, Windows Unattended, etc. and can install all of them via PXE
with customized kickstart files. Problem is, on our wide area net I
dont control the DHCP server. Id like to still be able to boot a
remove machine from flash drive with the smarts to get me to the PXE
server. A given RH/Fedora boot kernel + initrd will only allow
you to
install its matching distro version. Any thoughts on ways around
this?* Perhaps there's a way to chain boot into a PXE 'like' image
with the IP address of the PXE server already dialed in. It still
needs to make the DHCP request though to get its IP, gateway router,
maybe DNS, etc at the remote site.
The way I've done this is to have a boot cd (or flash disk), which
downloads the initrd and vmlinuz necessary for the install you are
going to do, creates a boot partition (or reuses the existing boot
partition), puts the initrd an vmlinuz in there, configures grub, and
then reboots, booting from the hard drive, but into an environment
very similar to what you would have received from PXE.
Okay I think Im with you but it would be nice to do this in one pass.
Im looking at loading all the kernels / initrds onto the flash disk but
that also has troubles. Unlink PXElinux and isolinux, syslinux only
supports 7 char. names so that makes for a messy flat file space with no
sub directories. There's extlinux with long names but thats not
working for me - seems to be very sensitve to the CHS drive geometry
problem. Last, looks like the kernel/initrd built for the PXE load dont
play well with being booted off the disk? At least that seems to be the
case w/ a couple of FC and Knoppix sets I tried. So that means
maintaining disk boot kernels for the flash disk and PXE boot kernels
for the PXE server. Arg.
mark
