Re: [edlug] Network boot using (3c905) network boot roms

[William Anderson <neuro@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

Paul Lewis wrote:
> Has anyone succesfully tried a linux diskless boot via a network card?

Yep, works sweet with a 3Com 3C905 doing a PXE boot booting Debian from a 
Debian box :)

http://lists.debian.org/debian-testing/2003/04/msg00069.html helped me out 
*a lot* when I was doing this - I now just leave the tftp stuff sitting and 
fire up dhcp if i want to do a floppy/cdless netinst install onto a new 
machine.

The relevant bit of my dhcpd.conf looks like this ...

host deb {
	fixed-address 192.168.whatever.foo;
	hardware ethernet 00:11:22:33:44:55;
	filename "pxelinux.0";
	next-server 192.168.mylocal.dns;
}

... on Debian sarge (at least), there's a compatible pxelinux.0 in 
/usr/lib/syslinux/ and it's the syslinux package which puts it there. My 
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default looks like this ...

default installer
prompt 1
timeout 600
label installer
	kernel tftpboot.img
	append load initrd=tftproot.bin ramdisk_size=65536 root=/dev/ram

I remember having to fiddle with (i.e. rebuild) the size of the boot image 
to 64MB - there just wasn't enough room to pack everything all in, and since 
that gets loaded to a ram disk, having > 64MB at net boot time is critical 
:)  I've tried it on a 64MB machine and it just fell right over.

--
_ __/|  William Anderson      | Brodie: The Force is strong with this one
\`O_o'  neuro at well dot com |    Jay: Dude, don't encourage him
=(_ _)= http://neuro.me.uk/   |  -- Mallrats, (1995)
   U  - Thhbt! GPG 0xFA5F1100 |
-
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