[CentOS] Network Installation of CentOS disk image via PXE

Ross S. W. Walker rwalker at medallion.com
Sat Feb 9 16:22:30 UTC 2008


vincenzo romero wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I've deployed new servers - installing new CentOS servers via PXE
> booting using its iso distribution stored on an NFS server.  For
> certain server types;  I'd like to install custom applications into a
> server and then generate an image of that server, and deploy again via
> PXE to another group of servers.
> 
> Wanted to find out if anyone can forward any pointers to 
> papers or links on:
> 
> 1.  Best and (cheapest) way to create disk image (that can be used for
> over the network installation over PXE) of an existing CentOS server
> with all its custom apps and packages ... would this be dd?  would
> this take a long time?
> 
> 2.  Would like to find out if you can point me to a guide or doc -
> that specifically describes this process;  most PXE install notes out
> there describe the PXE config setup and assumes an ISO image (to
> create a new server), as opposed to deploying a "ghosted" image of an
> existing server.
> 
> 3.  In a deployment of a "ghosted" image - would the DHCP
> automatically request for a new IP address upon completion of the
> installation on the target machine (since when I ghost the source
> machine, the network information will contain that source's machine IP
> address, MAC, etc. etc.)
> 
> Thanks in advance ..

We have PXE install in our environment that uses MS RIS to deploy
multiple RH distributions via kickstart using syslinux and the pxeboot
img included with the distros.

To recreate the setup completely on linux you will need:

1) DHCP server that supports PXE extensions

2) [Optional] PXE server for Linux to host multiple distros, if
you want to host just the one you could have DHCP point right to
the syslinux pxeboot loader.

3) TFTP server to host the initial boot images

4) WWW or FTP server to provide internal location to download the
distro RPMs (or you could use the Internet locations).

Here is a short How-To I found googling:

http://crashrecovery.org/CrashRecoveryKit/pxeboot/pxeboot.pdf

If you have a Win2k3 server license you could setup a Xen guest to
act as a RIS server too which would allow you to host Windows and
Linux distributions. You may have problems though with the DHCP/PXE
boot packets coming from the broadcast addresses to the guest, but
with tweaking I'm sure it could be made to work.

-Ross

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