I've got a system (Supermicro P8SCT) that lacks a floppy or CD and it's old enough that it won't boot from a USB stick. Before I scrounge an optical drive to plug in, I thought perhaps I could install over the network, as I see "legacy LAN boot" in the BIOS menu.
The guides for a LAN install I've found all want to do an automated kickstart install. Are there any guides that explain how to use eg. CentOS-6.0-i386-netinstall.iso for an interactive PXE installation?
I think I understand the DHCP config and I've got tftpd installed on my CentOS 5 server and see the empty /tftpboot directory. I'm guessing I need to unpack some of the files in the iso image into /tftpboot in some special layout and add some files from /usr/lib/syslinux. What's not clear is what files in the image go where in the tftpboot system, and what the menu stanza should look like in the menu file.
On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 16:51 -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote:
The guides for a LAN install I've found all want to do an automated kickstart install. Are there any guides that explain how to use eg. CentOS-6.0-i386-netinstall.iso for an interactive PXE installation?
I don't know of any howtos off the top of my head beyond kickstart documentation, but if you plan to do this more than once (and you very well may once you get a feel for how convenient pxe booted installs can be) you should take a look at Cobbler:
https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/
Piece of cake once this is stood up.
brian
----- Original Message ----- | I've got a system (Supermicro P8SCT) that lacks a floppy or CD and | it's old | enough that it won't boot from a USB stick. Before I scrounge an | optical | drive to plug in, I thought perhaps I could install over the network, | as I | see "legacy LAN boot" in the BIOS menu. | | The guides for a LAN install I've found all want to do an automated | kickstart install. Are there any guides that explain how to use eg. | CentOS-6.0-i386-netinstall.iso for an interactive PXE installation? | | I think I understand the DHCP config and I've got tftpd installed on | my | CentOS 5 server and see the empty /tftpboot directory. I'm guessing I | need | to unpack some of the files in the iso image into /tftpboot in some | special | layout and add some files from /usr/lib/syslinux. What's not clear is | what | files in the image go where in the tftpboot system, and what the menu | stanza should look like in the menu file. | _______________________________________________ | CentOS mailing list | CentOS@centos.org | http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Add the word interactive to your kickstart as an easy workaround. We also use memdisk with the "iso" option or grub to boot the ISO installation media
On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Kenneth Porter wrote:
The guides for a LAN install I've found all want to do an automated kickstart install. Are there any guides that explain how to use eg. CentOS-6.0-i386-netinstall.iso for an interactive PXE installation?
I think I understand the DHCP config and I've got tftpd installed on my CentOS 5 server and see the empty /tftpboot directory. I'm guessing I need to unpack some of the files in the iso image into /tftpboot in some special layout and add some files from /usr/lib/syslinux. What's not clear is what files in the image go where in the tftpboot system, and what the menu stanza should look like in the menu file.
LABEL centos-6-text.x86_64 MENU LABEL CentOS 6 x86_64 text installer KERNEL images/centos/6/x86_64/vmlinuz APPEND initrd=images/centos/6/x86_64/initrd.img ramdisk_size=100000 text
The images/ directory lives in /tftpboot on our tftp server.
The vmlinuz and initrd.img both come from the images/pxeboot directory in the install tree, e.g.,
http://mirrors.cat.pdx.edu/centos/6/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/
Of course, you might not want a text installation, given that it's braindead compared to its graphical counterpart...
I found the info on the Centos wiki helpful when I had these questions:
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PXE/PXE_Setup
Note the last line links to the oxen menu guide. I skipped the trouble of dhcp option entries. On Aug 4, 2011 6:43 PM, "Paul Heinlein" heinlein@madboa.com wrote:
On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Kenneth Porter wrote:
The guides for a LAN install I've found all want to do an automated kickstart install. Are there any guides that explain how to use eg. CentOS-6.0-i386-netinstall.iso for an interactive PXE installation?
I think I understand the DHCP config and I've got tftpd installed on my CentOS 5 server and see the empty /tftpboot directory. I'm guessing I need to unpack some of the files in the iso image into /tftpboot in some special layout and add some files from /usr/lib/syslinux. What's not clear is what files in the image go where in the tftpboot system, and what the menu stanza should look like in the menu file.
LABEL centos-6-text.x86_64 MENU LABEL CentOS 6 x86_64 text installer KERNEL images/centos/6/x86_64/vmlinuz APPEND initrd=images/centos/6/x86_64/initrd.img ramdisk_size=100000 text
The images/ directory lives in /tftpboot on our tftp server.
The vmlinuz and initrd.img both come from the images/pxeboot directory in the install tree, e.g.,
http://mirrors.cat.pdx.edu/centos/6/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/
Of course, you might not want a text installation, given that it's braindead compared to its graphical counterpart...
-- Paul Heinlein <> heinlein@madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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