Setting up a SLES PXE Boot server

Hi all,

We are trying to set up a SLES 11 box as a PXE boot server. Our desire is to create .img files using the DD command of base-line servers, copy the .img to this PXE boot server, and then use new server’s PXE boot option to automatically connect and install the image.

We are using the instructions found on https://tr.opensuse.org/SuiSE_install_with_PXE_boot and are running into questions.

We have the boot server configured with TFTP but we are having some concerns with DHCP. Evidently the PXE process needs DHCP to connect to the PXE boot server but we already have DHCP configured in our environment – it is handled by the Windows side of things. If we configure this PXE boot server with DHCP, how do we prevent it from interfering with the corporate enterprise DHCP process?

Jim Gosney

On 09/09/2015 07:54 AM, jgosney wrote:[color=blue]

We are trying to set up a SLES 11 box as a PXE boot server. Our desire
is to create .img files using the DD command of base-line servers, copy
the .img to this PXE boot server, and then use new server’s PXE boot
option to automatically connect and install the image.

We are using the instructions found on
https://tr.opensuse.org/SuiSE_install_with_PXE_boot and are running into
questions.

We have the boot server configured with TFTP but we are having some
concerns with DHCP. Evidently the PXE process needs DHCP to connect to
the PXE boot server but we already have DHCP configured in our
environment – it is handled by the Windows side of things. If we
configure this PXE boot server with DHCP, how do we prevent it from
interfering with the corporate enterprise DHCP process?[/color]

  1. Separate the networks
  2. Exclude your Linux box’s MAC addresses from the corporate DHCP server
    (assuming it’s possible to do so with that product).

A better option may be:

  1. Configure the corporate DHCP server with PXE information. It will
    only matter if the machines boot from the PXE server as an option, and
    most systems should not bother doing that. At the same time, the systems
    that should (yours) will, and can move along.


Good luck.

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