booting up/installing linux...

[Steve Phillips]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, bruce wrote:

> ok...
>
> i'm confused... i'm going to have to find someone with PXE expertise who can
> walk me though how this might/can work..
>

There is not much to get confused about really.

The PXE process is a very cut down DHCP client that simply requests on the 
wire for something to give it an IP address.

It also incorporates some code that allows a device to pass it an image of 
say - a boot floppy, in order to use this image as a boot device as if it 
were a real disk.

When yo utalk about secuirty issues, then yes, there are issues - if 
someone takes a PXE enabled device to another network, sets up their own 
DHCP server, gies the PXE device an IP and a boot image they can 
potentially boot the device. but it tends to be a physical "move to 
another network" which no doubt you would tend to notice.

The PXE process is incredibly simple - it is quite litterally that, what 
you can do with it however can be quite complex as there are a number of 
combinations of this process that allow for things such as automated 
machine rebuilds, diskless workstations, jumpstart/kickstart installations 
etc etc

Really, your best bet is to read some of the links from the google search 
and then play with it a little - as Ed said, you only need a dhcp server 
and to download some of the pxe stuff for linux to get it all going - if 
you have more specific questions after playing a bit then there are people 
here that can help but a generic question such as "whats this pxe stuff 
and how does it work" is probably a little outside the charter of this 
mailing list.

PS: a basic understanding of the DHCP process would also help, it may pay 
to see if you can find something on that as well if you are uncertain what 
a MAC address is or how PC's get an IP from a DHCP server.

(http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200004/im_dhcpb.html is a 
reasonable explanation)


-- 
Steve.