Re: OT: PXE explaination

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 08:49 -0700, Erik Bixby wrote:
> Does anyone know of a good explaination of how PXE works?

You should only see DHCP traffic followed by a TFTP download and
optionally some NFS traffic for the root filesystem.

Take a look at this:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5834950453.html

Quoting...
<SNIP>

How PXE Works

PXE defines a method for the BIOS or NIC ROM to fetch a booting code
over the network. It does this via standard Internet protocols. When the
appliance is powered on, the BIOS or ROM makes a DHCP request. The DHCP
server, recognizing the appliance as a network-booting client, returns
instructions on the location of a tftp server and the name of the name
of the file that it should download from the server. [...] It also, of
course, assigns the appropriate IP information.

The appliance then makes a connection to the TFTP server and requests
the [...] file. When the bootloader is downloaded, it executes. First,
it checks it's configuration files (located on the tftp server) and then
downloads the Linux kernel, passing it the necessary kernel arguments,
including the IP information received from DHCP. When the kernel loads,
it uses the IP information provided for it. The kernel can either
download an initial ramdisk (initrd) and use that as a root filesystem,
or it may just connect to an NFS server.

Once the kernel has gotten the root file system setup, the operating
system can complete the boot process, and the system is ready for use.

</SNIP>

...Kevin



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