So I picked up a rack mount server for pretty cheap, it doesn't come with any optical drives so I need to install an OS through the network. I want to install CentOS 5 on the setup, but I have never done a PXE install before. Should be a fun learning experience.

Now I've done some Google searches and can't really find a good article/tutorial that will show how to install CentOS specifically.

What I would REALLY like to do is to be able to run the PXE server through a "Live CD" on my laptop, that I'll connect to the server via network, and install it. I don't really have a dedicated Linux box to install a PXE server on.

What are my options here? Can someone point me in the direction of a good tutorial on how to do a PXE install with CentOS? Finding it rather difficult to find a descent tutorial on Google.

http://drbl.sourceforge.net/download/sourceforge/

Try the drbl live-cd. Be aware that the drblserver starts a dhcpserver on its own - dont do this in a production environment, your other users might complain!

Its a personal home network and I wont be doing this on a network that's connected to the internet, I have a separate switch I will connect the two devices together with to do the install, once I get it installed I'll put it on the live network with my other devices. Thanks for your reply, I will look into this.

Following are the configuration has to done on your PXE server (You can use VMWare too.)

Disable firewall and selinux
Mount ISO file
mount -o loop /mnt/e/centos5/CentOS-5.0-i386-bin-DVD.iso /mnt/iso
================================================
Configure DHCP Server ...................
#
# DHCP Server Configuration file.
# see /usr/share/doc/dhcp*/dhcpd.conf.sample
#

ddns-update-style interim;
subnet 10.10.10.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 10.10.10.98 10.10.10.99;
default-lease-time 3600;
max-lease-time 4800;
option routers 10.10.10.29;
option domain-name-servers 10.10.10.29;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option domain-name "qa.net";
option time-offset -8;
next-server 10.10.10.29;
}

host test {
hardware ethernet 00:10:F3:09:89:48;
fixed-address 10.10.10.98;
option host-name "test";
filename "/linux-install/pxelinux.0";
}
=================================================
Configure HTTP server...................
<Directory /mnt/iso>
Options Indexes
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

Alias /linux /mnt/iso
================================================
Enable TFTP server using chkconfig.. restart xinetd
#Chkconfig tftp on
#Service xinetd restart

Configure PXE Installation Service
#pxeos -a -i "test" -p HTTP -D 0 -s 10.10.10.29 -L /linux test