So I was able to get pxe/tftp running, now the device boot, gets an ip address, it loads the vmlinuz and the initrd but that's as far as it goes. After loading the initrd says "ready" and stops responding.



Any help would be appreciated. Also there is no vid card on this device so I cannot load a CD/DVD since all start with some sort of a graphical option (even to get into text mode).


I'm using CentOS as my PXE/DHCP/TFTP server


## /tftpboot/default ##

default menu.c32
prompt 0
timeout 1

MENU TITLE PXE Menu
LABEL CentOS5.5x32
MENU LABEL CentOS5.5x32
KERNEL images/vmlinuz
append initrd=images/initrd.img ramdisk_size=10000 text serial ks=http://172.16.2.15/centos/ks.cfg text

## END FILE ##

## KS.CFG ##

#platform=x86, AMD64, or Intel EM64T
# System authorization information
auth --useshadow --enablemd5
# System bootloader configuration
bootloader --location=mbr
# Partition clearing information
clearpart --all --initlabel
# Use text mode install
text
# Firewall configuration
firewall --disabled
# Run the Setup Agent on first boot
firstboot --disable
# System keyboard
keyboard us
# System language
lang en_US
# Installation logging level
logging --level=info
# Use network installation
url --url=http://172.16.2.15/centos
# Network information
network --bootproto=dhcp --onboot=on
# Reboot after installation
reboot
#Root password
rootpw --iscrypted something_here

# SELinux configuration
selinux --disabled
# Do not configure the X Window System
skipx
# System timezone
timezone America/Chicago
# Install OS instead of upgrade
install
# Disk partitioning information
part swap --bytes-per-inode=4096 --fstype="swap" --recommended
part / --bytes-per-inode=4096 --fstype="ext3" --grow --size=1

%packages
@base
@mysql
@admin-tools
@web-server
@system-tools
@text-internet
@editors

## END FILE ##


I used ngrep to monitor traffic for the ip address of the device, I DO see it "wget" the ks.cfg file but nothing is displayed on screen and I let it sit there for about 20 minutes after but still nothing.

Any help would be appreciated.

FYI - The device is a barebone device (no vid card AT ALL) only way is to use serial cable to connect to it.

Thanks again.

Where are you getting that information from? If you do not have a monitor connected to the device you are kickstarting...

Can you check on the server, whether the file was delivered? You setup a daemon to answer the http request on the server?

I have a serial cable connect to the device.


On the kickstart server, I can see the request on the access_log for Apache and it delivering it successfully. Also I have a ngrep session on the ks_server which confirms that the ks.cfg is being transmitted to the ks_client