[syslinux] Anyone interested in scripts for multiple PXELinux configs in a single TFTP directory

[Jurjen Bokma]

I rewrote parts of the HOWTO this morning, and put a link to the tarball
in it, so all you need now is
http://www.cs.rug.nl/~jurjen/iwi-howtos/linux/PXELinux-menu-scripts-Manual

'gards,
Jurjen

On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 00:38 +0200, Jurjen Bokma wrote:
> Dear syslinux list members,
> 
> I'm a newbie on this list. I hope I don't offend anyone by being
> slightly off-topic.
> 
> I had the problem of wanting multiple Linux distros (i.c. Debian,
> Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, SuSE, RedHat, CentOS, Fedora) installable from a
> single PXELinux menu, so I wrote a couple of scripts that do what is
> described below.
> The question is whether anyone would be interested in having the
> scripts, and if so from CVS or just posted?
> 
>      1. A script scans the entire mirror tree for files that 
>         
>               * are not too big and not too small 
>                 
>               * contain ASCII 
>                 
>               * are parseable by a PXELinux config parser 
>                 
>         and they list the selected files. 
>         This is a lengthy operation, intended for being used only during
>         server setup.
>         
>      2. An administrator manually selects some of the PXElinux files
>         found, and discards the others. 
>         
>      3. A script visits all the selected PXELinux configs, and for each
>         determines where the smallest parent directory is that contains
>         the files itself plus all kernels, initrds and other files that
>         are mentioned in it. It copies that directory to the TFTP tree. 
>         
>      4. The same script determines from the pathname to the PXELinux
>         configfile what distro, version and architecture it is meant
>         for, and copies it to a second tree in the TFTP tree that holds
>         only config files (and not kernels etc.) and is sorted by these
>         properties. 
>         
>      5. Again the same script modifies the last copy it made of the
>         PXELinux config in such a way that paths to kernels, ramdisks
>         etc. point into the first tree. 
>         
>      6. Another script scans the hierarchy of PXELinux config scripts in
>         the TFTP directory and for each directory it finds creates a
>         menu containing an entry for each PXELinux config file in the
>         directory, as well as for subdirs and parent dirs. 
>         
> 
> This way, we have a TFTP menu tree that is almost completely generated
> from the mirror itself, and enables us to boot into many of our distros.
> (Some don't work because they need extra boot parameters.)
> 
> The scripts are a bit primitive, as I'm not a Perl or Bash wizard, but
> they do work.
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> Jurjen
> 
-- 
Jurjen Bokma <j.bokma at cs.rug.nl>