PXE boot after Flash boot? (was Re: Flash Drive)

[Mark Heslep]

Jason Kohles wrote:

> On 11/17/05, *Mark Heslep* <mark at mitre.org <mailto:mark at mitre.org>> 
> wrote:
>
>
>     An aside to your aside on PXE:    I do the same when Im on a local net
>     where I control the DCHP server and can set the 'next server'
>     pointer to
>     my PXE server. On that server I have archived dozens of linux
>     flavors,
>     Knoppix, Windows Unattended, etc. and can install all of them via PXE
>     with customized kickstart files.   Problem is, on our  wide area net I
>     dont  control the DHCP server.   Id like to still be able to boot a
>     remove machine from flash drive with the smarts to get me to the PXE
>     server.    A given RH/Fedora boot kernel + initrd will only allow
>     you to
>     install  its matching distro version.    Any thoughts on ways around
>     this?*  Perhaps there's a way to  chain boot into a PXE 'like'  image
>     with the IP address of the PXE server already dialed in.   It still
>     needs to make the DHCP request though to get its IP, gateway router,
>     maybe DNS, etc at the remote site.
>
>
> The way I've done this is to have a boot cd (or flash disk), which 
> downloads the initrd and vmlinuz necessary for the install you are 
> going to do, creates a boot partition (or reuses the existing boot 
> partition), puts the initrd an vmlinuz in there, configures grub, and 
> then reboots, booting from the hard drive, but into an environment 
> very similar to what you would have received from PXE.
>
Okay I think Im with you but it would be nice to do this in one pass.  
Im looking at loading all the kernels / initrds onto the flash disk but 
that also has troubles.  Unlink PXElinux and isolinux, syslinux only 
supports 7 char. names so that makes for a messy flat file space with no 
sub directories.  There's extlinux with  long names but thats not 
working for me - seems to be very sensitve to the CHS drive geometry 
problem.  Last, looks like the kernel/initrd built for the PXE load dont 
play well with being booted off the disk?  At least that seems to be the 
case w/  a couple of FC and Knoppix sets I tried.  So that means 
maintaining disk boot kernels for the flash disk and PXE boot kernels 
for the PXE server.  Arg.

mark