[arch-releng] PXEboot + unattended install

[Greg Sutcliffe]

On 20 November 2011 20:03, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:53:59 +0000
> Greg Sutcliffe <greg.sutcliffe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Indeed, I already have dhcpd and bind9 running on the installation
>> server, as custom pxe config files are written per mac address (one of
>> the best features of pxelinux).
>
> are you sure that's a pxelinux feature?

I'm pretty sure it's the file pxelinux.0 which instructs the client to
attempt to download a file based on it's mac address, and failing
that, files based on it's network address (in hex), and failing that,
the file default.cfg. If you have a machine with MAC of
aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff and you create a file
$tftproot/pxelinux.cfg/01-aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff it will use that file in
preference to default.cfg.

If you don't have that file, you'll probably see something like this
on the output of the client as it boots:

       pxelinux.cfg/01-aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff
       pxelinux.cfg/C0A800FE
       pxelinux.cfg/C0A800F
       pxelinux.cfg/C0A800
       pxelinux.cfg/C0A80
       pxelinux.cfg/C0A8
       pxelinux.cfg/C0A
       pxelinux.cfg/C0
       pxelinux.cfg/C
       pxelinux.cfg/default

I'm fairly sure that's a pxelinux feature, but I could be wrong, and
it could be supported by other protocols too.