[syslinux] pxelinux internals

[Ryan McLean]

>Here is my understanding about pxelinux:
>
>- it is proxy dhcp server, so it must be telling
>PXEClient boot file name (i.e. pxelinux.0)

No PXELinux is NOT a proxy dhcp server.
PXELinux is a network bootloader

>-once pxelinux.0 starts running at client side, it
>reads pxelinux.cfg/AppropriateConfigClientFile
>- then pxelinux.0 image (say initrd.img) with the help
>of memdisk (memdisk is just used as a RAM disk driver)
>
>Is it correct?

PXELinux downloads the kernal & image of the OS to be installed / loaded.
(generally vmlinuz & initrd.img respectively)

A rough transcript of the process is as follows

computer chooses to boot via NIC
Makes call to DHCP server
DHCP server responds with IP address & location of a TFTP server.
Client recieves pxelinux.0 & pxelinux.cfg
User chooses option to boot a liunx distro (this can be automated)
PXELinux then downloads and executes the approprate kernel (eg vmlinuz) 
and image file (eg )

>I want to boot Windows PE 2.0 from pxelinux.
>I was trying to boot pxeboot.0 (wrenamed pxeboot.n12 -
>indows pe network boot program) using pxelinux.
>i tried following configurations but failed:
>
>1. kernel boot/pxeboot.0
>   initrd=somegarbage kepxe
>
>2. kernel memdisk
>   initrd=boot\pxeboot.0 kepxe
>
>Can someone please advice?

For a start pxelinux.0 is NOT the kernel nor is it an image file.

I am not too sure for windows PE but try looking for ntldr (maybe 
ntldr.bin)

Regards,


Ryan McLean