[syslinux] PXE Linux boot to F12 automatically

[Dag Wieers]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Chadley Wilson wrote:

> As I said I think it is the way I am explaining the environment and order of operations... :(
> And I do struggle to explain the system to others. This is my fault as I work in extreme detail (scripts and some code) and hardly ever take a step back to summarize the big picture.

The art of getting good answers is related to the art of asking the right 
question. The more information you give that is not important, the less 
likely you get a good answer or people simply got lost in the email.

I for one get lost wondering what the long email had to do with syslinux 
in the first place.

Your original question boiled down to:

     The one problem I face is that you should press F12 to boot from
     network, if you don't -  the system must continue to boot from the
     next boot device. This is not what happens to me with PXELinux 3.72, I
     don't press F12 and the system still boots fromnetwork.

And the answer someone already gave was that selecting the boot device 
using F12 is functionality from the BIOS, not from pxelinux. As soon as 
you are in pxelinux, the BIOS has already booted from the network.

So if you boot from the network when not pressing F12, the BIOS is 
configured to boot from the network by default or because none of the 
other boot devices work when it falls back to booting from the network.

There are ways to handle booting the next device from syslinux, but that 
was not the question.

PS Your track-record, the number of machines you installed in the past, 
your relation to Bill and all the phases your process goes through are 
unrelated to the question and confuses everyone who wants to help you. No 
matter how well you may know your stuff.

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]