Re: OT: PXE explaination

I'm looking for something more in depth. Something like a RFC. Only,
there is no RFC for PXE, and the links I've found to Intel's site
forward to a dead .org site... I want to know enough about how PXE is
supposed to work to be able to watch a machine boot with Ethereal, and
see where the problem is.
-Erik

On 6/30/05, Kevin <plug-discuss@firstpacket.com> wrote:
> 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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