[CentOS] PXE Boot Live CD

Thu Jun 6 04:23:10 UTC 2013
Tucker <junk at gmail.com>

Are you trying to PXE boot a RAM based OS image?  If so, I've actually been
working on something similar.  I have a different end goal but I think the
fundamental concept is the same.  After much monkeying around (including
basically rolling my own mini Linux distro), I've finally learned enough to
get back on track using CentOS as the base.  Basically, you just need to
use yum with the --installroot option, make a customized /init, move a
couple files into place and cpio the whole thing up.

This is basically what I do for an extremely minimal OS image:

yum -y groupinstall base --installroot /tmp/live-image-build
yum -y install
http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
--installroot
/tmp/live-image-build
yum -y install $other_packages --installroot /tmp/live-image-build

A basic /init file:
"""
hostname somehostname.domain.tld
. /etc/profile
mkdir dev/pts
mkdir dev/shm
chmod 1777 dev/shm
mount -av
ln -sf /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
exec ${init} 3
"""

cd /tmp/image-build && find . -print0 | sudo cpio --null -ov --format=newc
| gzip -9 > ../initramfs.cpio.gz

That's a really simple explanation but it should get you on the right path,
assuming you're trying to do what I think you're trying to do.  If you're
going to need people to be able to store data somewhere, you'll need to
come up with some time of remote file system (NFS, Fuse, etc) and sort that
out.  I don't have much need to store anything, so I haven't played with
that at all.

Hopefully this helps.


On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 6:09 AM, N Tunix <ntunix9 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Guys
> We are starting a project's desktop virtualization, I'm trying to create an
> image centos to install Citrix Receiver for q clients the machines do not
> need HD.
> Among all tests q I bumped into two "errors":
> 1. Install Centos
> 2. Foreign q there is no bootable image
> I studied various contents on the internet a list of them below:
> https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/PxeBoot
> https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/GetToolset
> http://www.bestlinux.com.br/index.php/dicas/126-distribuicoes/2609
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_a_Live_CD
>
> http://pkgs.org/centos-6-rhel-6/epel-i386/livecd-tools-13.4-2.el6.i686.rpm.html
> https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/CreateImage
>
> https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/browser/trunk/CentOS6/rhel6beta-livecd-minimal.ks?rev=88
>
> https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/InstallToHardDrive
> http://unixrevolution.blogspot.com.br/2011/12/pxe-boot-livecd-image.html
> http://pkgs.org/download/livecd-tools
> https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/
>
> Besides these follow this tutorial to create the tftp server.
>
> http://practical-tech.blogspot.com.br/2011/10/how-to-configure-pxe-server-in-rhel-6.html
>
> If anyone has any tips thanks.
> Thank you!
> _______________________________________________
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> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>



-- 

--tucker