PXE Boot possible?

Hello,

is there somewhere a tutorial to create a PXE Boot?
My notebook has no cdrom nor a bootable usb-disk. At boottime I could choose "boot from network (PXE)", but I have not found any information about this.

I would like to restore my notebook hdd with an image on my desktop hdd. So I want to boot my notebook from network and then choose the image on the desktop pc (over the same network) and restore the system partition.

In another thread:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=45126&highlight=ramdisk.dat

was someone who had done this job. But I need some more help. Perhaps somebody has seen a tutorial and could help.

thanks in advance for every hint..
cheers,
mitch

 

Well, booting TI over PXE isn't the most obvious thing in the world to set up...
Your best bet is to get a copy of knoppix (a free bootable linux - www.knoppix.net) and use it's terminal server setup to get you started. Then share the directory where your laptop's image is located using Samba (on knoppix). This of course will require you to boot your desktop PC using the Knoppix CD.

PXE requires a TFTP server and a DHCP server. Both of these services are included on the knoppix system and are configured when you run the knoppix terminal server setup utility. This is located in the "Services" submenu of the penguin icon menu.

You could also use windows, but you will have to google for the Windows version of these servers.

On knoppix after you start the terminal service, it creates a tftpboot directory structure like this:

/ +

|
+ tftpboot/

|
+ pxelinux.cfg/​

The tftpboot directory is where you will place the TI boot files: (You can get these files from a TI boot CD.)

Code:

kernel.dat
ramdisk.dat

The pxelinux.cfg directory is where you place a file named "default" which is used by the pxelinux boot loader to determine what bootable image to load. Knoppix creates the "default" file for it's terminal server, but you can replace it with the example file below.

Here is an example of a "default" file:

Code:

DEFAULT ti8
TIMEOUT 30   
PROMPT 1

LABEL ti8
	kernel kernel.dat
	append initrd=ramdisk.dat ramdisk_size=16000 vga=791 quiet

The DHCP server setup that knoppix creates should not require any changes. This isn't a tutorial, but I hope this information helps.

Good Luck.

 

hello,

thank you very much for this help! I will try this the next days. I think your tutorial will help many users.

Thank you.

greetings,
mitch

 

I'm using True Image via PXE for several months now, but with every boot method I tried the graphics are scrambled in True Image 8 (from CD it is fine). I tried BPBATCH, PXELINUX and just starting bootwiz.sys in TFTPD32. There is no difference. I passed all the options from the f11.cfg like in this PXELINUX config file:

Also the splash screen is not shown like when I boot from CD. Any ideas?

 

That is very nice.

Can some linux wizards tell me how to do the same for a USB key? Would be very handy for clones on the road!