Linux netbooting
Instructions follow on how to netboot using Ubuntu Linux.
Server Setup
Setup DHCP
Setup PXE
Setup Filesystem
Useful information: Building PXE Imager from scratch
1) Use debian debootstrap tool to create basic filesystem.
sudo debootstrap breezy /home/yusuf/ubuntu ftp://ftp.is.co.za/ubuntu/
2) chroot into new filesystem
sudo chroot /home/yusuf/ubuntu/
3) create apt source list
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
4) Add packages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ssh olsrd
5) Tar the filesystem
sudo tar -cvjf ubuntu.tar.gz ./ubuntu/
6) Copy the filesystem to the server and un-tar
scp ubuntu.tar.gz user@server:
Client Setup
Create Linux Kernel
There are two types of Kernel images you can build. The first is an image which contains all the necessary file system drivers, or even network drivers in the case of NFS, to allow the file systems to mount and let the operating system boot normally. The second type of kernel image puts all the drivers in a file which is mounted in RAM as a RAM disk. This is known as an initrd file. initrd stands for "initial ramdisk"
Create kernel image with module drivers built in
1) Start the kernel configuration program
sudo make menuconfig
2) Set the following options on the kernel configuration menus
Processor type and features ---> Processor family: Pentium-Classic Device Drivers ---> Networking support ---> Networking options ---> [*]IP: kernel level autoconfiguration [*] IP: DHCP support [*] IP: BOOTP support [*] IP: RARP support File systems ---> Network File Systems ---> <*> NFS file system support [*] Root file system on NFS Loadable module support ---> [] Enable loadable module support
3) Make the kernel
sudo make
4) Make the kernel image
sudo make bzImage
This will give you your linix kernel image (bzImage) in /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.12/arch/i386/boot/
5) Copy the kernel image to
sudo make modules
sudo make modules_install
sudo mkinitrd -o initrd.img-2.6.12 2.6.12