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Old 12-23-2006, 10:22 PM   #1
paulsiu
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Registered: Apr 2006
Posts: 143

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Booting PCLinux from PXE


I have a old laptop where the CD-ROM is basically dead. The BIOS cannot boot from USB key, but can boot from PCMCIA drive (!?) and PXE.

I had the bright idea that I'll setup a PXE server on my Windows Machine since I don't think anyone sells PCMCIA hard disk any more. I downloaded a program call TFTPD32. I created dump the content of the pclinux CD into the TFTPD32 directory. I run the TFTPD32 program and set the ISOLINUX in the pclinux directory as the base directory. Because I already have a DHCP server, I configure TFTPD32 to issue in a different range than th current DHCP server.

I copy syslinx and copy the pxelinux.0 image. I follow the instruction in syslinux and create a pxelinux.cfg directory. In it, I create a default text file with the following entries (copied from the grub):

default boot
label boot
kernel vmlinuz livecd=livecd initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=788 keyb=us splash=silent fstab=rw,noauto
append initrd=initrd.gz

I started up the laptop and select network boot. Success! Well sort of, I can see initrd running. It works great until it gets to the point where it's trying to mount loop image and fails. I am guessing that the root isn't correct.

Any ideas?

Paul
 
Old 12-24-2006, 06:22 PM   #2
paulsiu
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Registered: Apr 2006
Posts: 143

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After playing around with the initrd parameters a bit, I was able to get to the point where I can see the PcLinx OS logo appear with the progress bar. However, at this point, the whole things stops (the TFTPD server indicated that the request had timed out). Reading some of the other post about LiveCd, it appears that I have to break open initrd and edit some config files. If I had access to a Linux machine, this would be less of a problem.

Another possibility would be to try to install Grub For DOS and load it over the net. However, I examine the PCLinux repository and cannot find a netboot image.

Currently, I am in the process installing ubuntu using instlux. That appears to be working at the moment.

Paul
 
  


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