CentOS - Feb 2010 - emergency! linux kickstart pxe boot needed

Hey folks,

I'm at colocaiton in the middle of a big rebuild and it seems I have a
faulty CD rom in the server that I need to put Centos on via
Kickstart.   So I cannot boot the Centos 5.4 net install CD.

Is PXE kickstart easy to set up?  I have a laptop here with DHCP
already going.   I google and a bunch of stuff comes up but it does
not look simple.

I'm just shooting htis out ther eon the odd chance someone gets it
soon nad knows of a really easy howto for this

thanks!

-- 
?Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV?
         - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food"

2010/2/28 Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com>:
> Hey folks,
>
> I'm at colocaiton in the middle of a big rebuild and it seems I have a
> faulty CD rom in the server that I need to put Centos on via
> Kickstart. ? So I cannot boot the Centos 5.4 net install CD.
>
> Is PXE kickstart easy to set up? ?I have a laptop here with DHCP
> already going. ? I google and a bunch of stuff comes up but it does
> not look simple.
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PXE , maybe it's a bit easier to
download full centos dvd and install from it?

--
Eero

>Is PXE kickstart easy to set up?  I have a laptop here with DHCP
>already going.   I google and a bunch of stuff comes up but it does
>not look simple.
Sure,
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/Installation_Guide/ch-pxe.html

Also, if you have an OS on the server, you can tweak grub to boot into
install and pull from a url instead of disc, and look for a ks file as
well.

jlc

On 28 Feb 2010, at 16:51, Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm at colocaiton in the middle of a big rebuild and it seems I have a
> faulty CD rom in the server that I need to put Centos on via
> Kickstart.
Had a similar problem and easiest solution in the end was to buy a USB
CD drive from local computer store.

Good luck!

Ben

> Is PXE kickstart easy to set up?  I have a laptop here with DHCP
> already going.   I google and a bunch of stuff comes up but it does
> not look simple.
system-config-netboot should be able to take care of almost everything for 
you .. although you will need to add a statement like the following in the 
subnet statement for your dhcp server:

allow booting; allow bootp; class "pxeclients" { match if
substring(option
vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient"; next-server <ip
address of
tftp server that you ran system-config-netboot on>; 
filename "linux-install/pxelinux.0"; }

In case you have issues on the client side with pxe booting .. check out 
some gPXE (formerly Etherboot) howtos at 
http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/howtos which allow you to boot over http.

Hope this helps,
Barry

----- Original Message ----
> From: Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com>
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> Sent: Sun, February 28, 2010 1:51:18 PM
> Subject: [CentOS] emergency! linux kickstart pxe boot needed
> 
> Is PXE kickstart easy to set up?  I have a laptop here with DHCP
> already going.   I google and a bunch of stuff comes up but it does
> not look simple.
> 
> I'm just shooting htis out ther eon the odd chance someone gets it
> soon nad knows of a really easy howto for this

"yum install cobbler" and use cobbler to build a netinstall server in
10 minutes :)

These are very handy:

http://wiki.xdroop.com/space/RedHat/kickstart/Cobbler
http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/08/10/cobbler-how-to-set-up-a-network-boot-server-in-10-minutes/

And the oficial documentation

https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/

Hope this helps


Fer