Re: PXE boot of disk diagnostics and/or BIOS flashers

[John <red computerdatasafe com au>]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, Steven Timm wrote:

> 
> I know this is slightly off-topic, but I figure that since there
> are a lot of people on this list who do PXE on a regular basis
> someone may have an answer for this:
> 
> We frequently need to boot either disk diagnostics or BIOS flashers
> which are based either in DOS or Windows '98.  At the moment
> we boot them off of floppy disk, but we are wondering if anyone
> has successfully managed to boot them over PXE  (or, for that matter,
> via LILO in a standalone DOS partition on the hard disk?)  We are
> examining the feasibility of going without floppy drives
> in future purchases but would need to resolve this issue if we do.
> USB floppies aren't an option because a large portion of my legacy
> hardware has no working USB ports.

I boot drdos, freedos by PXE. Works well. Follow the docs;-)

Particularly the syslinux doc which has some of the info you need.

Here's my PXE directory layout:
[summer magpie PXE]$ find $PWD -type f
/tftpboot/PXE/pxelinux.0
/tftpboot/PXE/pxelinux.cfg/default
/tftpboot/PXE/pxelinux.cfg/C0A800
/tftpboot/PXE/kernel.options
/tftpboot/PXE/t
/tftpboot/PXE/messages
/tftpboot/PXE/images/freedos/help.txt
/tftpboot/PXE/images/freedos/FD16BOOT.IMG
/tftpboot/PXE/images/freedos/FD32BOOT.IMG
/tftpboot/PXE/images/freedos/MEMTEST.IMG
/tftpboot/PXE/images/rescue/initrd.img
/tftpboot/PXE/images/rescue/message.txt
/tftpboot/PXE/images/rescue/partimage-0.6.1.tar.bz2
/tftpboot/PXE/images/rescue/vmlinuz
/tftpboot/PXE/images/Mandrake/help.txt
/tftpboot/PXE/images/memdisk
/tftpboot/PXE/images/RedHat/initrd.img
/tftpboot/PXE/images/RedHat/vmlinuz
/tftpboot/PXE/images/RedHat/help.txt
/tftpboot/PXE/images/RedHat/README
/tftpboot/PXE/images/debian/dl-initrd
/tftpboot/PXE/images/debian/vmlinuz.tftpboot
/tftpboot/PXE/images/debian/help.txt
/tftpboot/PXE/images/debian/tftpboot.img
/tftpboot/PXE/images/debian/root.bin
/tftpboot/PXE/images/dosboot.img
/tftpboot/PXE/images/sarge/cdrom-initrd.gz
/tftpboot/PXE/images/sarge/vmlinuz
/tftpboot/PXE/images/sarge/net-initrd.gz
/tftpboot/PXE/splash.lss
/tftpboot/PXE/z.lss
/tftpboot/PXE/splash.ppm
/tftpboot/PXE/splish.lss
[

These are the most relevant config lines. Regrettably, many are too long
to post sensibly.
label dx
    KERNEL   images/memdisk
         APPEND   initrd=images/linux/network.img
         IPAPPEND 1

label d1
    kernel images/memdisk
    append initrd=images/dosboot.img


label d2
    kernel images/memdisk
         append initrd=images/freedos/FD16BOOT.IMG

label d3
    kernel images/memdisk
         append initrd=images/freedos/FD32BOOT.IMG





> 
> Steve Timm
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steven C. Timm (630) 840-8525  timm fnal gov  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
> Fermilab Computing Division/Core Support Services Dept.
> Assistant Group Leader, Scientific Computing Support Group
> Lead of Computing Farms Team
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Kickstart-list mailing list
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> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list
> 

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