[syslinux] Help with PXE over ISO

[Gene Cumm]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Phil Pokorny via Syslinux
<syslinux at zytor.com> wrote:
>>
>> Here is a bit of an odd request... II'm in a large company with lots of
>> politics getting in the way of things. We were able to convince the main IT
>> team to let us take over a subnet and run our own DHCP server. This lets us
>> create a really nice PXE environment where we can build servers and ship
>> them out. However, now we are in need to rebuild servers already deployed.
>> We have machines in over 70 subnets around the company. Politics won't let
>> me update the DHCP settings to point to my TFTP server.
>>
>
> How fancy is your pxe config file?  Could you just burn the contents of
> your /ftfpboot directory to a CD-ROM and use isolinux to load the files
> from the CD-ROM?  Eliminate DHCP, TFTP, and PXE entirely.
>
> If you get the kernel and initrd loaded with the right commandline, the
> kernel will initialize the network interface and let you finish the process
> via TCP/IP...

Just a matter of setting the commandline essentially the same.  Just
don't try to use PXE to feed IP addresses.  Use it to seed a real DHCP
client (and hopefully accelerate the DHCP transaction.

>> So, is there a way to create an ISO image that will do the job of the
>> initial DHCP request and can either send the TFTP request to my server,
>> or simply run pxelinux for me pointing to the configuration on my TFTP
>> server? I tried gPXE's rom-o-matic and got it to work for VM's but the
>> second I ran it on HP machines it complained about memory issues (didn't
>> like it when gPXE tried to overwrite the ethernet card's driver I
>> think).

If you want an ISO, you'll likely need iPXE or gPXE since you could do
the initial DHCP for addressing then load your stuff.

Precise errors will help your diagnosis.

-- 
-Gene