[syslinux] PXE Network installs

[Michael Blandford]

Matt Pavlovich wrote:

>Peter-
>
>I am working on developing a system to perform network boot and
>automated system installs of many systems, and I would like to use PXE.
>
>New systems would boot via PXE, then directed to special images that
>partition, format and install the server.  Upon reboot, the system would
>boot off of local disk.
>
>Do you know of any resources, or of anyone that has begun to develop an
>infrastructure like this?
>
>  
>
I am working on a project to do something very much like that.

I am using pxelinux, syslinux, and isolinux depending on the medium.

Basically it is a multi OS loader. 

Here is what it does:

At boot we download a "universal" client via pxe ( or from cd ).  This 
is a small linux distro + perl + DBI. 
It looks into our database, determines the respective OS, 
customizations, etc
partitions the disk into a little root partition and copies the 
necessary binaries onto it.
Installs syslinux onto the hard drive and reboots.
Client boots and runs through its native install ( windows + 
unattend.txt, Redhat + kickstart, etc )

All data is pulled from the database so they are hands free installs.

The