Fedora Linux

syslinux / pxelinux family. These programs have been specifically tailored for booting from optical disk, removable disk drives, and PXE boot servers. Each of them uses text files to configure the available boot options.

The USB boot image diskboot.img is a complete image of a bootable 8 MB VFAT (MS-DOS FAT with long filenames) filesystem. This filesystem contains the isolinux bootloader, the kernel, the initrd ramdisk image, and configuration files.

The Intel Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) specification is used for network booting of Fedora systems. The PXE boot process uses the pxelinux bootloader, which is retrieved from /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.0 on the TFTP server. Once it is running, pxelinux searches for an appropriate configuration file in /tftpboot/linux- install/pxelinux.cfg , first trying for a file named with the hardware MAC address of the target system's Ethernet adapter, then a series of filenames generated from the target's IP address written in hexadecimal, and then finally the file default .

The system-config-netboot tool is executed when you select the menu option System>Administration>Server Settings>Network Booting Service. It creates a file in /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg named according to the network address specified in the GUI. For example, if the user specifies a certain configuration for the IP network 192.168.1, the configuration is stored in the file /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg/C0A801 because 192.168.1 in decimal corresponds to C0A801 in hexadecimal.

system-config-netboot obtains the pxelinux bootloader, Linux kernel, and initrd files from the specified network installation server (the pxelinux bootloader is found in the /images directory on the network installation server).

A network installation server is not intended to provide boot files for the installation, so its only purpose is to provide the package files and other information needed to install Fedora Core after the installation environment has loaded. While FTP, NFS, and HTTP are all available, NFS and FTP use multiple ports (NFS actually relies on multiple server programs), whereas HTTP uses a single server on a single port.

10.3.3. What About...

10.3.3.1. ...installing from a public HTTP or FTP server?

 It is possible to install directly from a public Fedora Core HTTP or FTP mirror; simply enter the mirror URL as the server for the HTTP or FTP installation methods. However, doing so generates a lot of Internet traffic, resulting in a long installation time, and the likelihood of a network error aborting the entire installation partway through is higher than it would be on a local LAN. If you are going to install more than once, it's a better idea to download the files onto a local machine for speed.

10.3.3.2. ...booting the installer from a mini-CD?

The normal Fedora Core CD 1 is too large to fit on a mini-CD, but the boot image in /images/boot.iso on that CD (or the Fedora Core mirror servers) is under 8 MB in size and will easily fit on an 8 cm mini-CD or a 'business card' CD.

10.3.3.3. ...booting the installer from floppy disk?

Unfortunately, the Fedora Core installation boot files are now too large to fit on a 1.44 MB floppy disk. However, you may be able to use the 8 MB USB disk image file ( diskboot.img ) with a larger removable disk, such as a Zip or LS-120 disk.

10.3.3.4. ...configuring a PXE installation from the command line?

Although system-config-netboot is recommended for PXE configuration, you can also use the pxeos and pxeboot commands to configure PXE from the command line.

To configure a version of Fedora Core for PXE booting:

# pxeos -a -i ' Fedora Core 6 ' -p HTTP -D 0 -s 192.168.1.2 -L /fedora fc6

These are the arguments used:

-a

Add to the existing configuration

-i ' Fedora Core 6 '

The descriptive identification for this entry

-p HTTP

Installation protocol (can be HTTP , FTP , or NFS )

-D 0

Sets this up as an installation instead of a diskless boot

-s 192.168.1.2

The HTTP, FTP, or NFS server address

-L /fedora

The pathname on the server; in this example, the -p , -s , and -L options combine to be equivalent to http://192.168.1.2/fedora

fc6

The operating system identifier

To configure specific hosts to use the fc6 boot image:

# pxeboot -a -O fc6 192.168.1

This will configure all hosts that have an IP address beginning with 192.168.1 to use the