Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5 - VIRTUAL SERVER ADMINISTRATION, Installation Manual

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Chapter 34.
361
PXE Network Installations
Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows for installation over a network using the NFS, FTP, or HTTP protocols.
A network installation can be started from a boot CD-ROM, a bootable flash memory drive, or by using
the
askmethod
boot option with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CD #1. Alternatively, if the system to be
installed contains a network interface card (NIC) with Pre-Execution Environment (PXE) support, it can
be configured to boot from files on another networked system rather than local media such as a CD-
ROM.
For a PXE network installation, the client's NIC with PXE support sends out a broadcast request for
DHCP information. The DHCP server provides the client with an IP address, other network information
such as name server, the IP address or hostname of the
tftp
server (which provides the files
necessary to start the installation program), and the location of the files on the
tftp
server. This is
possible because of PXELINUX, which is part of the
syslinux
package.
The following steps must be performed to prepare for a PXE installation:
1. Configure the network (NFS, FTP, HTTP) server to export the installation tree.
2. Configure the files on the
tftp
server necessary for PXE booting.
3. Configure which hosts are allowed to boot from the PXE configuration.
4. Start the
tftp
service.
5. Configure DHCP.
6. Boot the client, and start the installation.
34.1. Setting up the Network Server
First, configure an NFS, FTP, or HTTP server to export the entire installation tree for the version
and variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to be installed. Refer to the section
Preparing for a Network
Installation
in the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide
for detailed instructions.
34.2. PXE Boot Configuration
The next step is to copy the files necessary to start the installation to the
tftp
server so they can
be found when the client requests them. The
tftp
server is usually the same server as the network
server exporting the installation tree.
To copy these files, run the
Network Booting Tool
on the NFS, FTP, or HTTP server. A separate PXE
server is not necessary.
34.2.1. Command Line Configuration
If the network server is not running X, the
pxeos
command line utility, which is part of the
system-
config-netboot-cmd
package, can be used to configure the
tftp
server files as described in
Section 34.4, “TFTPD”
:
pxeos ­­a ­­i ­" <description> " ­­p <NFS|HTTP|FTP> ­­D 0 ­­s client.example.com \
­L <net-location> ­­k <kernel> ­­K <kickstart> <os-identifer>