I've been playing around with the ideas about how would it be best to automate the tftp infrastructure, for sure, what you are requesting is vital if you want to be able to specify kernel parameters per host (for the pxe boot phase).

One option that I'm looking into is using gpxelinux instead of pxelinux, gpxelinux supports HTTP, so that would mean I could fetch the syslinux configuration on the fly via HTTP instead of creating them.

another benefit is that you use the HTTP protocol, is reliability and performance which is much more suitable for large installations / high latency setups.

you can see some examples here: http://theforeman.org/blogs/show/1.

would appreciate any feedback
Ohad

ohadlevy wrote:

I've been playing around with the ideas about how would it be best to automate the tftp infrastructure, for sure, what you are requesting is vital if you want to be able to specify kernel parameters per host (for the pxe boot phase).

One option that I'm looking into is using gpxelinux instead of pxelinux, gpxelinux supports HTTP, so that would mean I could fetch the syslinux configuration on the fly via HTTP instead of creating them.

another benefit is that you use the HTTP protocol, is reliability and performance which is much more suitable for large installations / high latency setups.

you can see some examples here: http://theforeman.org/blogs/show/1.

would appreciate any feedback
Ohad

Yes, you are right, gpxe is very interesting, and avoid the use of the poor TFTP protocol.
Gpxe support script, menu, and is over HTTP.
You can generate gpxe entry, the same as preseed or kickstart template

The link is not accessible, you mean http://theforeman.org/blogs/index/3 ?

pli wrote:

Yes, you are right, gpxe is very interesting, and avoid the use of the poor TFTP protocol.
Gpxe support script, menu, and is over HTTP.
You can generate gpxe entry, the same as preseed or kickstart template

I've already done that on a test branch, however I've found out that the fallback to boot from local disk (or next bios device) is not working as reliably as pxelinux

(see http://syslinux.zytor.com/archives/2009-September/013235.html for full description)

The link is not accessible, you mean http://theforeman.org/blogs/index/3 ?

yeah, I guess you needed more permissions for the other link (which is for editing the blog entry..)