Suggestions for the Installer (regarding network installs)

[Tom Diehl]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Jesse Keating wrote:

> On Tuesday 14 October 2003 04:13, Bryan White wrote:
> > I have never looked into boot ROMs for NICs.  That
> > sounds like overkill just to launch an install.
> 
> Actually it's not at all.  Network booting provides a very fast and 
> efficient method of starting an installation.  Just a simple DHCP 
> request, followed by a tftp connection to pull down a kenrel/initrd 
> image provided on the first installation CD, and you're set.  We use 
> syslinux as the boot loader, so we can have a nice kickstart menu where 
> the installation techs just pick the type of system that they're 
> installing and the kickstart will automagically start.

I love my pxe boot machines for the same reasons Jesse listed above. I do
not know how I lived without PXE. Expecially now that things do not fit on
a floppy. :-) Besides PXE is so much faster than a floppy ever could be.

On a slightly different note I have a few older machines that I would like
to setup for PXE booting but I need ROMs for them. Does anyone have a good
source for them? I have heard that there might be a floppy image available
for testing that you can later burn to a Eprom once you know it works. So
far I have not had much luck finding it though.

-- 
......Tom		Registered Linux User #14522	http://counter.li.org
tdiehl at rogueind.com	My current SpamTrap ------->	mtd123 at rogueind.com