[CentOS] force a PXE boot
Tom Brown
tom at ng23.net
Wed Jul 26 18:04:15 UTC 2006
> that depends on the BIOS of your system; it's not an issue that CentOS
> can (easily) deal with. some Dell servers have a utility that you can
> use to change BIOS settings from within the OS, but i can't speak to how
> well it works.
>
> here's how i solved a related problem when setting up a lab of machines
> that would be PXE-booting to reinstall themselves without an admin at
> the console:
>
> 1) in the BIOS, set the boot order to PXE,HD (you can put CD/floppy/USB
> before HD if you want, but PXE must be first)
> 2) set up your TFTP server such that the default boot target boots from
> the system's hard drive (use the "LOCALBOOT" option as described here:
> http://syslinux.zytor.com/faq.php)
> 3) created another PXELINUX configuration that performs a network boot
> and give it a name that corresponds to either the machine's MAC address
> or the machine's IP address (as described here:
> http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php#config)
> 4) if you're using the PXE boot to kickstart the machine, add a line to
> the %post section of your ks.cfg that will ssh to the TFTP server and
> move aside the PXELINUX config file with the machine's MAC/IP address
> (you can make this process as simple or complicated as you need)
>
> if you follow these steps, then the machine will PXE-boot when the
> special config file is in place, kickstart itself, and then move the
> special config file aside; when it next boots, the TFTP server won't
> find the special config file, so it'll use the default config file,
> which tells the machine to boot from the local hard drive.
>
> does this make sense?
>
> -steve
>
> p.s. there are other ways of having the machine "phone home" to the tftp
> server besides using ssh; one of my colleagues did it with a little php
> script. alternately, you could have a script running on the TFTP server
> that watches the logfile for evidence of successful PXE boots and uses
> that information to move aside the special config file.
thanks - these are Dells yes so i'll give this a shot
cheers
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