[TriLUG] PXE booting into a minimal linux environment

[Robert Dale]

Shawn,

It sounds like you're missing something, like the root image (or
initrd).  This is what will set up the environment for NFS mounting.
PXE booting is pretty generic - standardized - in that it's not
specific to any distribution.  These instructions seem to have more
information than what you were looking at -
http://www.stanford.edu/~alfw/PXE-Kickstart/PXE-Kickstart.html

Also, make sure your initrd contains the right drivers for you NIC and
other boot-time critical components.

-- 
Robert Dale

On 10/18/06, Shawn Hood <shawnlhood at gmail.com> wrote:
> List,
>
> I would like to boot a knoppix cd image or other minimal linux via my
> PXE server which utilizes PXELinux.  While there are a number of faqs,
> wikis, etc. out there on doing this with Knoppix, most of them are
> describing how to start a pxe server from Knoppix, then starting a
> terminal server.  I want to boot knoppix via my pxe server (rhel4u4
> box).
>
> That said, I know it is not feasible to somehow load the entire disk
> image via PXE.  Is there a way to load the Knoppix initrd/kernel via
> PXE, and send boot parameters to set an IP and mount an NFS share?  I
> saw this on http://dev.brantleyonline.com/wiki/index.php/PXE_Booting_-_Knoppix
> but have experienced some problems.  I used the "knoppix
> nfsdir=10.0.0.101:/path" parameter but it's not working.  The network
> interfaces aren't even being configured, so how is it supposed to
> work?  After the client boots the image I have stored on my PXE
> server, it cannot mount the NFS share (thus the knoppix fs isn't
> available) and exits to a minimal shell.
>
> To compound this, my keyboard isn't working in this minimal shell even
> after trying a number of boot parameters.  I'll probably get this
> worked out.
>
> I've considered booting to PXEGrub and working from there, but this
> seems like an unnecessary intermediate step.
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Shawn
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