[TriLUG] PXE booting into a minimal linux environment

[Shawn Hood]

List,

I would like to boot a knoppix cd image or other minimal linux via my
PXE server which utilizes PXELinux.  While there are a number of faqs,
wikis, etc. out there on doing this with Knoppix, most of them are
describing how to start a pxe server from Knoppix, then starting a
terminal server.  I want to boot knoppix via my pxe server (rhel4u4
box).

That said, I know it is not feasible to somehow load the entire disk
image via PXE.  Is there a way to load the Knoppix initrd/kernel via
PXE, and send boot parameters to set an IP and mount an NFS share?  I
saw this on http://dev.brantleyonline.com/wiki/index.php/PXE_Booting_-_Knoppix
but have experienced some problems.  I used the "knoppix
nfsdir=10.0.0.101:/path" parameter but it's not working.  The network
interfaces aren't even being configured, so how is it supposed to
work?  After the client boots the image I have stored on my PXE
server, it cannot mount the NFS share (thus the knoppix fs isn't
available) and exits to a minimal shell.

To compound this, my keyboard isn't working in this minimal shell even
after trying a number of boot parameters.  I'll probably get this
worked out.

I've considered booting to PXEGrub and working from there, but this
seems like an unnecessary intermediate step.

Any ideas?


Thanks

Shawn