ok... to be specific my problem is that i have an hp pavilion notebook with winxp installed, but torched... my goal is to configure my desktop machine with redhat 9 as a netboot server for it that has (read only) access to the ntfs partition for windows xp so i can copy off what i can before reinstalling everything. the laptop does have a pxe compatible boot agent installed and i have gotten to the point where the laptop's boot agent says "no boot filename recieved" what do i have to do to configure the server end. I would prefer instructions that assume i don't know much about net booting.

anyone? all i need to know is how to set up a tftp server and configure a system to be booted on the remote machine.

anyone? certainly someone has done this?

To setup a netboot you must have first a dhcp server and then a tftp server with special features, as the server shipped with redhat 9. Then, setup kernel image and initrd with pxe package, activate tftp server with your TCP wrapper (xinetd) , download boot loader from syslinux, configure your "default" file, which is the same that lilo.conf, but for syslinux.

Your computer :
- emit a DHCP request
- get the TFTP server's MAC
- download boot loader (syslinux) and configuration file
- display boot menu
- download and run kernel and initrd images

http://cfm.gs.washington.edu/~adioso...ver.xml#config