I've got PXE/TFTP setup for various Linux distributions and some utilities (clonezilla, dban, etc). I'm now starting in on OpenBSD.
As far as I've been able to figure out via internet searches, pxelinux (from the syslinux package) is unable to pass control of a machine directly to a BSD kernel. Instead, you have to use the BSD-supplied 'pxeboot' loader. The naming conventions enforced by pxelinux mean that pxeboot must be called pxeboot.0.
Here's a simplified view of my tftpboot directory:
etc/ `-- boot.conf images/openbsd/ `-- 5.4 | -- amd64 | | -- bsd | `-- pxeboot.0 `-- i386 | -- bsd `-- pxeboot.0
And here's a relevent snippet of my PXE menu file:
LABEL openbsd-5.4.amd64 MENU LABEL OpenBSD 5.4 amd64 KERNEL images/openbsd/5.4/amd64/pxeboot.0
So far so good. If I boot the image listed above, I get the BSD boot loader -- but, and this is the crux of my question, afaict I have to type the location of the actual kernel manually:
boot> boot images/openbsd/5.4/amd64/bsd
After I type that, the OpenBSD installation kernel boots without a hitch. But manually typing the kernel path is prone to error, and it's not scriptable.
It appears that you can have one (and only one!) boot.conf file from which pxeboot can get some directions. Since I want to be able to serve up at least two different images (32- and 64-bits), I can't specify a kernel in boot.conf. The best I can do is print a banner, e.g.,
echo ********************************************************** echo The OpenBSD pxeboot utility cannot be passed an alterative echo kernel path. So you'll have to issue one of the following echo commands manually from the boot> prompt: echo echo boot images/openbsd/5.4/amd64/bsd echo boot images/openbsd/5.4/i386/bsd echo **********************************************************
My question: Does anyone else know a better way? Can I pass an alternative kernel path or boot.conf to pxeboot?