[syslinux] PXE Boot Solution

[Chad Z. Hower]

Matthew Holevinski wrote:
> I've never setup a pxe server, but I was curious what all that would
> entail, is it something i could setup on my windows box, or would
> i need to setup a dedicated server for this purpose, and what all

Its cake walk. You can just set up a TFTP server with DHCP capabilities. 
There is a free one out there that does both.

> could I do with it? Could I get it to recognize machines and wipe them
> and re-image them for me without the need for a cd or thumbdrive?

Yes. 1&1, one of the largest hosters in the world with tens of thousands 
of machines in Germany alone does this.

> Maybe an autodetection script to tell what make/model the machine is
> so it knows what image to apply or a menu with an image selection to
> apply to the machine? Like I said I'm not really all to sure what all

MAC ID

> Honestly, it would be great, if i could reboot say 20 machines, have
> them all pxe boot from my machine and then sit back and watch my
> machine
> multicast out an image to all of them. Not really sure what I'm
> talking about so be gentle.


There are Linux distros that can do this too, but I think they require a 
Linux boot stub to be loaded on each machine. Or you could load it by 
PXE, then go from there.