[syslinux] Chain-loading from WDS to PXELinux on a different tftp server

[Luke Ledgerd]

Hey guys,

We are going with WDS to fire up first to get the benefits of targeted M$ deployments. If you have the "handle unknown computers" off on your M$ Distribution point, then you can still use regular WDS which runs next as a PXE filter (DLL linked into WDS) to fire off anything you want to including PXELinux.

The stuff I was talking about before with PXELinux not working in EFI-64 was related to the EFI Network Boot Rom trying to connect to the DHCP server on Port 4011 (PXE server). I could have kept hacking around with DHCP options, or forced DHCPD to listen on that port, or set up a proper PXEServer that complies with 3.X of the PXE spec, but it wasn't required for what we wanted in this environment so I moved on, and let WDS workaround the problem with EFI + PXELinux I had.

Question.
1) Can you kick off PXELinux without a Unix DHCP Server (WDS), and make it jump to a different tftp server from WDS? That's what I'm going for. I want the default PATH to include the IP address of a different TFTP server in PXE Linux.

The new implementation will have to have a separate folder for EFI64, EFI32, PXE 2.1 because that's what I think WDS demands - or at least for whatever chainloads the PXELinux off another TFTP server.

2) As a fallback, PXEChain as I understand requires another DHCP server

http://www.vcritical.com/2011/06/peaceful-coexistence-wds-and-linux-pxe-servers/
http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Common_Problems#pxechain.com-2

These docs look good by they don't explain how it all plays together with PXELinux dual booting with EFI/Non EFI shared configuration.

Does PXEChain do everything I want? Can it even a pass configuration file for PXELinux to start with.pxechain

This looks very interesting - This Russian knows what he is doing....
http://sysmagazine.com/posts/175669/

I'll let you know how I go today with it. We are going for the perfect setup where SCCM does it's thing if it needs to - else throws back to WDS -> PXELinux for a computer not targeted for any SCCM PXE Deployment task sequences, so it's going to be a bit different from the above article.

Why a different TFTP server? We have a NAS that is already setup and tested and it does a good job of mounting lots of loopback ISO's and sharing them on TFTP, even if it doesn't support MTFTP and all that.

Cheers,

Luke