PXE (Pre-Execution Environment) is a way to boot a computer which can't boot from a physical drive (CD, DVD, USB). The computer gets an IP address from the network using DHCP and then download a PXE image from a TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server. On Linux, Dnsmasq does all the networking stuff and Syslinux provides a PXE image. The LiveCD of any GNU/Linux distribution contains configuration files for Syslinux and a compressed file system which can be used by network boot.
1- Configure the PXE server network (IP address, DNS...) and make it up and running.
2- Uncompress or mount an ISO image of an Ubuntu LiveCD to /tmp/iso.
This may work too with other distributions, but this example has only been
tested with Ubuntu.
3- Prepare a TFTP directory:
mkdir -p /srv/tftpboot
cp -a /tmp/iso/isolinux/* /srv/tftpboot/
mkdir /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
mv /srv/tftpboot/isolinux.cfg /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
cp -r /tmp/iso/casper /src/tftpboot
# This requires Syslinux to be installed
cp /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /srv/tftpboot4- Configure DNSMasq to be both a DHCP server and a TFTP one. To do so, edit
/etc/dnsmasq.conf:
# Uncomment following line if you want to restrict to one interface #interface=eth0 dhcp-range=192.168.0.50,192.168.0.150,12h dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0 enable-tftp tftp-root=/srv/tftpboot
5- (Re)Start Dnsmasq service and enjoy your PXE server !
Debian provides files on its FTP mirrors which can be used to set up a PXE server to boot Debian netinstall.
- 32-bit version: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/i386/
- 64-bit version: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/debian-installer/amd64/
On this FTP, only initrd.gz, linux and pxelinux.0 are really useful.
pxelinux.cfg/default can be rewritten in a much simpler version:
DEFAULT linux
LABEL linux
kernel linux
append vga=normal initrd=initrd.gz --
TIMEOUT 0