PXE vs PXE

[Lisa Kachold]

This has been a standard technique in Unix [BSD, AIX, Solaris and
HP-UX] for diskless servers since the early days (pre-Linus).

In linux PXE booting from servers is best supported via LTSP project:

http://www.ltsp.org/
http://www.kegel.com/linux/pxe.html
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/1639.html

It is very fun, especially with older hardware and nice fast networking.

Additional fiber channel RAID for shared disk I/O on a switched
backplane makes these systems nice and swift.

On 2/12/10, Dazed_75 <lthielster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Turns out the two PXE servers I built do totally different things and really
> should be called PXE based Install Servers AND I can imagine a third which
> might more properly be described as a PXE Boot Server.  BTW, for those who
> do not know, PXE stands for Pre-eXecution Environment and really does let
> you boot a machine from the network.  Anyway, here are the three types I
> mentioned:
>
>    1. from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PXEInstallMultiDistro I built a
>    server that does PXE boots from files stored entirely on the PXE server.
>    Those files came from .iso files that had been previously mounted and the
>    necessary material extracted when the server is set up.  The .iso files
> need
>    not be kept since they are not used during a PXE boot.  The booting is
>    generally into a Live environment with the option of installing.
>    2. from
>
> http://www.howtoforge.com/install-multiple-linux-distributions-via-pxe-the-easy-wayI
> built a PXE server that does PXE boots using only a few files resident
> on
>    the PXE server and retrieves most of the material from the internet EVERY
>    TIME a client uses the PXE based boot.  These all seem to boot directly
> to
>    an installer (no live environment).
>    3. I have not seen any article for this but I can imagine PXE booting
>    being used simply to boot a system where the OS and Application files
> only
>    live on the PXE server.  Configuration and user files could live locally
> or
>    on the server.  I suspect PXE is never used this way but do not know.
>
> BTW, the server I built for #2 only works for some of the distributions it
> purports to.  Both the Fedora and CentOS installs fail because the install
> procedures ask for information that the client doing the booting cannot
> provide.  Ubuntu Karmic and Mandriva seem to work fine.  The single entry
> for Karmic appears able to install all the core distributions (i.e. Ubuntu,
> Kubuntu, etc).  The Mandriva install lets you choose KDE, GNOME, or CUSTOM
> (whatever that means).
>
> It seems to me that method 1 is superior for speed and bandwidth
> considerations.  Method 2 seems better for the ability to install variations
> of configuration or distro builds.  I suspect it would be possible to do
> both in a single PXE server though it would be more work.
>
> What I would like to see for method #1 is that the .iso files were retained
> for use in burning discs either on the PXE server or a client on the net
> (not a PXE function) AND might be mounted by the PXE server function rather
> than having to extract files when building the server.  Since all three uses
> only require reading the .iso's I would think they could be shared.
>
> Opinions?  And is anyone interested in this?
>
> --
> Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
>
> The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
> that I wish it always to be kept alive.
>  - Thomas Jefferson
>


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