Re: [Etherboot-users] pxe boot ?

[Roy W. <roy...@ya...>]

Hello,

Thanks for this Cristian. I have been looking at the
PXELINUX and SYSLINUX sites for hours. Unfortunately
although I have considerable knowledge on TCP/IP and
other sysadmin work, I cannot make sense of this. This
is written confusingly. Maybe if I was a Linux user
for many years, I would get this, but it's been a very
frustrating few hours I must admit.

Here's the easy bit : I got the PXELINUX.0 file to
boot the PXELINUX.

Here's the hard bit : I have not got a kernel image or
the configuration script that would make something
boot, and there are no examples as such. There are
some descriptions of how to do this, mostly Linux
oriented and kind of anti-Windows in focus with jokes
like "if you have a Windows server and cannot fix that
..." and then little information on getting things
working from a Windows box. I wish I'd worked with
Linux for the past 10 years, but I didn't, and well, I
just want things to work ... reams of technical data
on UNDI and ISC DHCP 3.0 do not make this easy (I
*obviously* don't know about UNDI and ISC, I just want
to be able to get something working that I can learn
from, and do something practical and useful).

Please, I would be so grateful if someone could send
to my private email address or point me to premade
images for DOS or Linux and the configuration files
that go along with them all to run from a Windows box
with tftpd32 so that PXELINUX can boot ? Then I can
start to play with the settings described on the
PXELINUX page and really learn something.

I've spent some hours trying to decipher these pages
but it's not easy with the cross-referencing between
SYSLINUX and PXELINUX "PXELINUX operates in many ways
like SYSLINUX. If you are not familiar with SYSLINUX,
read the SYSLINUX FAQ first, since this documentation
only explains the differences" etc. so it's very hard
to get anywhere FAST.

All I really need are some pre-made config scripts and
some premade images for this. I'm feeling very much
like this is a secret club that to gain admittance to
I have to subject myself to 10 hours of reading Linux
documentation. Please help, if someone actually has a
working PXELINUX, please let me know the image and the
config script, then I can be up and running in 10
minutes instead of 10 hours, and then I can mod and
tweak and actually LEARN. Sometimes, to learn, it's
important to see working examples that you can learn
from, but I'm just as clueless as I was when I started
looked at the PXELINUX pages, as I've got no way of
building the image and config script to go with it at
the moment.

Thanks,

Roy.


--- Cristian Mitrana <cri...@on...>
wrote:

> * Roy Wiseman <roy...@ya...> [24-09-05
> 18:19]:
>  
> > Hi,
> > 
> > This is a little more tricky than I was hoping !!
> > 
> > First of all PXE or Etherboot, I don't get the
> > difference. Ok, Etherboot maybe offers more
> options
> > and piggy-backs off the PXE standard, if that's
> all
> > then that makes sense ?
> 
>  Etherboot was born from the same reason as PXE,
> netbooting a computer,
> but PXE requires a second stage program due to the
> size constrains of the
> implementation. Etherboot, more versatile grace to
> it's open source
> nature, can directly load the OS from the network,
> but the file downloaded
> must be produced by the mknbi program (mknbi-linux,
> mknbi-dos).
> It can function also as a PXE boot stack for NICs
> that don't have that,
> which is great for people that want a unified setup
> based on PXE.
> > Second, Rom-o-matic offers the below eepro100
> options.
> > I'm stumped, 20 or so options, but which matches
> my
> > card !?!? does anyone know how to find this out ??
> I
> 
> The multiple choices are for generating a .rom file
> to be written on the
> card's EEPROM (or directly in the on-board BIOS of
> the PC). You should pick
> one based on the PCI ID's of the card, but for
> generating an image that is
> not going to the NIC's EEPROM this is not necessary,
> you can pick any of
> them, the result will be the same.
> > took the first in the list, and got a zpxe as said
> on
> > an EtherBoot site. ok, great it seemed to work,
> > EtherBoot came up from PXE boot after DHCP picked
> up
> > an IP, so it correctly took the Etherboot image
> and
> > ran it, so I get the option boot from NIC or Quit.
> ok,
> > great, I want to boot NIC, but there is no option
> > either here or in the extended options on
> rom-o-matic
> > to give a network image file. ie. in a really
> simple
> > case, say I have a DOS boot image .ima file and I
> want
> > EtherBoot to grab that and boot it. I mean this
> sounds
> > incredibly simple, but it's not obvious, how can I
> > tell EtherBoot where to go for it's second stage
> image
> > ??? I've been reading the docs and finding nothing
> on
> > this.
> 
>  To boot a DOS image (let's say a floppy image) you
> can get away with PXE
> booting and pxelinux from Syslinux
> (syslinux.zytor.com). PXE booting loads
> pxelinux.0 that cand boot, via memdisk, a DOS
> floppy.
>  If you want more a more elaborate setup, than
> etherboot and mknbi-dos can
> be the answer, you just need to learn to use
> mknbi-dos and instruct
> etherboot to load it after the steps that you have
> taken so far.
> 
>  Please look in the Etherboot wiki for details of
> this solution, a good
> page is at:
> 
>
http://wiki.etherboot.org/pmwiki.php/Main/BootingMemdisk,
> the whole wiki will explain a lot of the inner
> workings of net-booting.
> 
> hth,
> 
> mitu
> 



		
___________________________________________________________ 
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday 
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com