Netboot Install

[Jonathan Hudson]

Some hints about Netboot install, in case it's of use to anyone else.

0. The scenario
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One old Celeron 400Mhz with non-bootable SCSI CDROM, (kanga,
172.31.0.242). This is the target for installation. It has a floppy
disk.

A DHCP server (roo, 172.31.0.252), using dnsmasq as the DHCP
server. roo has a pretty much home made Linux on it. I added tftp-hpa
to it, built from source.

Assumption: You're firewalled and will not expose services used for
this exercise to the world. You have a reasonable (ADSL) network
connection.

Server applications summary:

dnsmasq
xinetd
tftp-hpa

1. Setup DHCP-BOOT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On roo (the DHCP server):

o In /etc/dnsmasq.conf, add the line:

   dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0,roo,172.31.0.252

   This machine already serves an IP address to kanga via DHCP.

o Restart dnsmasq.

On roo:

o Download the Ubunto netboot tar file from
 
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/warty/main/daily-installer-i386/current/images/netboot/pxeboot.tar.gz.

o Unpack into a suitable directory, e.g. /var/lib/tftpboot

   tar -xzf pxeboot.tar.gz -C /var/lib/tftpboot/
   chown -R nobody:nobody /var/lib/tftpboot

o Enable the tftpd server. Add the following as /etc/xinet.d/tftp.

   service tftp
   {
         disable                 = no
         socket_type             = dgram
         wait                    = yes
         user                    = root
         server                  = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
         server_args             = -v -s /var/lib/tftpboot
         only_from   = 172.31.0.240/28
         interface   = 172.31.0.252
   }

   On some random machine:

o Build an Etherboot boot floppy. kanga (the installation target) has
   an 3Com 3c905 NIC

o Download and unpack Etherboot (etherboot-5.3.9.tar.bz2 from
   SourceForge in my case).

o Documentation from
   http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/doc/html/documentation.html

o Make the boot floppy

   make bin/3c90x.zfd0

   (Subsititute your NIC type for 3c90x)

2. Start the install
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

o Boot the install target (kanga) from the etherboot boot floppy

o Marvel as Ubuntu is installed over the net.