Hello,

I am working on setting up a PXE based build system in our environment.

Short description on how it will work is, server will boot into network, get an IP address and PXE server details from DHCP server and then we select the rebuild option in the PXE menu. Then, it should download the kickstart file over http. Here is the problem, I noticed that in my couple of test servers this step is failing as it cannot download the Kickstart file.

Few additional points:

There is no problem with the HTTP server as there is another server which is getting rebuilt successfully (in the same setup). And even the problematic servers used to work fine before and it stopped working all of a sudden. I am able to download the kickstart file using wget.

I tried looking around but couldn't find anything amiss. Out of my three test servers, two of them are Dell PowerEdge R710 and the third one is a desktop. All three used to work fine but since last few days, one Dell PowerEdge server and the desktop started having this issue. Attached a screenshot on how its trying to download the kickstart file. For troubleshooting, I tried changing 'inst.ks' to 'inst.repo' in the PXE menu file and it still fails.

Let me know if something isn't clear. Any pointers will be helpful. Thanks.

I thought the internet service in use on PXE was TFTP, not http. TFTP is basically using dhcp extensions and ftp extensions which were not supported by every ftp/dhcp program last time I checked. There's a helpful section with documentation in Slackware install dvds, a usb-and-pxe-installers/ directory. You can grok them on any Slackware mirror or the main site.

Thanks for the response.. I am still debugging this.. The problem is that this issue isn't consistently reproducible which is making it difficult to troubleshoot.

All slackware install cds have a usb-and-pxe-installers/ directory. Useful reading.

Add "linksleep=30" to APPEND line in pxelinux.cfg/default

Did it ever work correctly on this exact system?
Do other systems work as expected.



I think I'd use ipxe/gpxe and see if it works.

What I think you are saying is that you get some preboot enviroment from tftp and then it looks to some resource like nfs or http or ftp to then get more.