Hello,

I have been searching/scouring the internet for a simple answer to a complex question:
How can I boot a mini-OS (or any OS) via the network using PXE and NFS shares?

The Problem:
I want a simple OS to PXE boot, mount the NFS share, and run a script (or scripts) to update BIOS and other Firmware automatically.

What I have:
I got PXE configured, but I can't seem to do anything other than Kickstart the installation. I have DHCP configured to tell it to boot of the network; I've got the TFTP server serving up the pxeboot.cfg/default file (acting as the boot loader); and I've got the kernel and initrd loading. I also have a NFS share with a complete CentOS installation installed to it (different from the server's installation).

What I am missing:
How do I get the kernel/initrd to mount an NFS share as root, and boot from that? Once I get that setup, I am relatively sure I can write the scripts to update BIOS and such, but I am missing this key step.

By the way, I have tried using system-config-netboot to configure a diskless host, but it doesn't seem to work. Can someone explain exactly what this tool does that I don't have?

I am using CentOS in this case, but it seems like I should be able to use any Linux OS which supports DHCP, PXE, and NFS.

Slackware has an excellent doc on it in ~/usb-and-pxe-installers/ of every cd. You can grab it alone
wget ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/slackwar...README_PXE.TXT

Hey business_kid, thank you for the document.

I have found a large number of places that will walk me though setting up a PXE Installation. What I am trying to do, is actually RUN the OS from the network, using PXE and NFS. Think of it like a diskless client (no CD Drive or Hard disk drive) that I want to run a simple text based OS on. More precisely, I want a kernel and shell loaded so that I can run a script automatically.

The kernel that comes setup for PXE Booting seems to dump me into anaconda to start the installation. I don't want to run anaconda. I want to download some firmware patches and execute them in order to update the BIOS, BMC, RAID Controller, etc. before I install the OS.

Any ideas?

It's doable. Go seraching with +diskless in the search

Hi ajr-tech, I am in the same exact technical situation as you, needing to boot a minimal os (in this case, centos) off pxe and update hundreds of machines' of machine bios configs and save their bios configs to the nfs share. I attempted to pass a ks=blahblahblah parameter to the boot append string that I try to boot the machine from, but it seems to skip it since it's a prebuilt machine. Did you ever find out how to accomplish your goal? Thanks