Description of problem: I am trying to set up an installation server with no previous experience. I am unable to make any sense of the information provided in the online System Administration Guide and the pxeos man page. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): See related URL. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Try to read the documentation concerning the pxeos command: pxeos -a -i "<description>" -p <NFS|HTTP|FTP> -D 0 -s client.example.com \ -L <net-location> -k <kernel> \ -K <kickstart><os-identifer> Actual results: The answers to the following questions remain unanswered: What do I use as the -L parameter if I am setting up an NFS server? What do I use as the -k parameter? What do I use as the -K parameter? Expected results: The answers to the above questions along with a few examples. Additional info: For my installation (TFTP) server is also my NFS and DHCP server. My installation directory for RHEL 4, i386 is /home/install/rh-es-4 My kickstart file is /home/install/rh-es-4/ks.cfg If my server has an IP address of 192.168.0.1, what is the pxeos command that would set this up? Some examples for system-config-netboot would probably be useful, too. And it is confusing to give a server a name of "client", so it might be better to have "-s installer.example.com".
making this bug block 241618, for queueing
I've managed to set up an installation server using the graphical system-config-netboot facility, so I have answered some of my own questions. First, it looks like "<kickstart>" and "<os-identifer>" should be separated by a space. The command line shown doesn't have one. For my NFS case, I think the kickstart parameter (-K) should be nfs:192.168.0.1:/home/install/rh-es-4/ks.cfg And I assume an http example would be http://192.168.0.1/install/rh-es-4/ks.cfg You could check that this works with a browser beforehand. The kernel parameter (-k) is confusing because it says "version". So can you use "2.6"? I think this parameter probably wants the location of the kernel you will boot for installing this system. Maybe /home/install/rh-es-4/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz is the correct setting. Another question is how is the pxeboot command related to the pxeos command? Could we see a sample server setup that uses both pxeboot and pxeos? And should there be a space between "<value>" and "<host>" in the pxeboot command? (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/System_Administration_Guide/Adding_PXE_Hosts-Command_Line_Configuration.html)?
Some of the issues raised in this very old bug have persisted to the current version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Installation Guide. I've addressed them in build 3.1-11, with: * expanded definitions for the -L, -K, and -k options * changed name of example server to installer.example.com * added a note about the existence of the pxeboot tool as an alternative The issue of the space between <value> and <host> must have been addressed some time previously; it was already present in recent versions of the guide. New version of the text: 34.2.1. Command Line Configuration If the network server is not running X, the pxeos command line utility, which is part of the system-config-netboot-cmd package, can be used to configure the tftp server files as described in Section 34.4, “TFTPD”: pxeos -a -i "<description>" -p <NFS|HTTP|FTP> -D 0 -s installer.example.com \ -L <location> -k <kernel> -K <kickstart> <os-identifer> The following list explains the options: * -a — Specifies that an OS instance is being added to the PXE configuration. * -i "<description>" — Replace "<description>" with a description of the OS instance. * -p <NFS|HTTP|FTP> — Specify which of the NFS, FTP, or HTTP protocols to use for installation. Only one may be specified. * -D <0|1> — Specify "0" which indicates that it is not a diskless configuration since pxeos can be used to configure a diskless environment as well. * -s installer.example.com — Provide the name of the NFS, FTP, or HTTP server after the -s option. * -L <location> — Provide the location of the installation tree on that server after the -L option. For example, if the installation tree is exported as /install/rhel5 on an NFS share, specify -L /install/rhel5. * -k <kernel> — Provide the specific kernel for booting. Installation trees can contain multiple kernels. For example, if the installation tree contain a patched kernel named vmlinuz-du alongside the standard kernel named vmlinuz, use -k vmlinuz-du to specify the patched kernel. * -K <kickstart> — Provide the location of the kickstart file, if available. Specify this location as a full path, including the protocol; for example: -K nfs:192.168.0.1:/install/rhel5/ks.cfg * <os-identifer> — Specify the OS identifier, which is used as the directory name in the /tftpboot/linux-install/ directory. If FTP is selected as the installation protocol and anonymous login is not available, specify a username and password for login, with the following options before <os-identifer> in the previous command: -A 0 -u <username> -p <password> pxeos writes the results to the /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg/pxeos.xml file. For more information on command line options available for the pxeos command, refer to the pxeos man page. The pxeboot tool can also edit the /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg/pxeos.xml file and uses similar options to pxeos. Refer to the pxeboot man page for more detail.