[syslinux] PXELinux Q(s) :)

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Jerry Gilyeat <jerry at voyager.alabanza.com> writes:

> For some reason it just can't seem to find 'init'.  It's in the
> initrd, as is everything else that currently works just fine using
> the 2.2 kernel.  And to help troubleshoot, I can make the kernel and
> initrd available for perusal.
> 
> The long and the short of this whole sordid tale is this: does
> anyone have -any- idea why this is happening, and how I can fix it?

Maybe try appending "init=/sbin/init" or somesuch to the kernel boot
line?  What is the exact panic message?

You do know that you can use Red Hat's kickstart mechanism to
accomplish the same thing?  Just take Red Hat's bootnet.img disk,
mount it, copy the initrd and vmlinuz binaries to /tftpboot, and
configure pxelinux to load them.  Then you can just boot it with
something like:

   bootnet ks=nfs:server.alabanza.com:/path/to/ks.cfg

...and have a fully automated Red Hat 7.3 installation or upgrade,
entirely off of the network.  Kickstart works better than imaging if
your hardware is not uniform :-).

(Of course, you have to create ks.cfg, but that's not too hard,
especially these days.  The interactive installer creates a sample
ks.cfg for you and leaves it in ~root.)

 - Pat