[syslinux] Netbooting / building

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Michael Blandford <mlblandf at sedona.ch.intel.com> writes:

> boot ( some OS - hopefully linux )from the network using pxelinux.
> make a small partition dos partition on the first disk.
> connect ( via perl dbi ) to a back end database
> 
> Download the appropriate files for either a winxp build OR a
> kernel/ramdisk for a complete linux build

My system does this for Windows installations.  (As you already know,
RedHat Kickstart will do the job for Linux.)

  <http://unattended.sourceforge.net/>

This boots to DOS, connects to a network share, and uses DJGPP Perl to
partition/format the disk and generate the unattend.txt file.

> The hardest parts in my mind are: talking to the database,
> autodectecting the harddrives and ethernet controllers.  This is
> where I was hoping linux would help us versus trying to boot dos.

Interestingly, dealing with hard drives and network cards in DOS is
actually *easier* than in Linux.  Hard drive controllers, even modern
RAID and SCSI controllers, generally have a BIOS which lets DOS see
them automatically.  And all PXE network cards can be supported by a
single "universal" DOS network driver.  In other words, one DOS boot
disk with one network driver can use all modern disk controllers and
network cards, whether or not (say) Linux drivers even exist yet.  Of
course, this assumes the SCSI BIOS and PXE stacks actually work, which
is sometimes a little iffy.

As for talking to the database, I do not know whether DBI will work
under DJGPP Perl.  However, in my latest release, I ship a little
module for parsing CSV files.  I use it at work to parse a corporate
inventory spreadsheet and automatically assign Windows XP and Office
XP license keys during installation.  My system's framework is fairly
extensible; it has hooks so you can add your own snippets of Perl code
to autocompute pretty much any setting.  For example, you can assign
the host name based on the MAC address, or assign the partitioning
scheme based on the host name, or both.

Anyway, this system may not be exactly what you want, but it should
provide a starting point or at least some ideas.  I have considered
ditching DOS and using Linux instead, because I am getting tired of
DOS limitations.  (In particular, DOS requires a reboot after running
fdisk.)  But I am not sure I want to get into the Linux boot disk
business; the DOS boot disk business has been bad enough :-).

 - Pat