On Tuesday 20 March 2007, John R Pierce wrote:
Dave wrote:
Hello, I've got a machine i'd like to put CentOS 4.4 on. Unfortunately this machine doesn't have a rom in it, just a floppy and a network card. I was wondering if i could boot it, then have it pick up what it needs to start the install off the network and do an unattended install vi nfs? Or, if that's not possible would it be possible to boot and load CentOS completely from the network bypassing the hard disk altogether? I don't need x on this box, in fact it doesn't have a monitor, most of the work it will do will be via ssh, or unattended stuff.
if the system will do a PXE boot from the network and you've got a bootp/dhcp server on the LAN segment you should be able to setup a jumpstart and load the kernel via tftp, then install the system from http or nfs. I haven't done this myself in ages, so I can't be of more assistance
As John says, _if_ it can do pxe then you can install. You'll need a properly configured dhcp/pxe server, the vmlinux and initrd.img files from 4.4/os/xxx/images/pxeboot, pxelinux (from the syslinux package) and a suitable pxelinux config.
minimal pxelinux.cfg example (assuming the pxeboot files mentioned above lives in /tftpboot or equiv on your server): LABEL c4_install KERNEL vmlinuz APPEND initrd=initrd.img
The doc files that comes with the syslinux package are good (/usr/share/doc/syslinux-2.11/pxelinux.doc for example).
good luck, Peter