On Mon, 30 May 2005 10:23 pm, Ajay Mulwani wrote:

What I am looking for is booting the machine using CD and installing the OS from an nfs repository. Good idea, it's faster and easier than juggling CDs.

But why not netboot into an install? You'll need: a DHCP server with /etc/dhcpd.conf setup a tftp server (atftpd) with /tftpboot/pxelinux.0 and /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default the CD default kernel /tftpboot/sles9-vmlinuz.default the CD YaST initrd /tftpboot/sles9-initrd.yast a network repository of the Suse of your choice (Suse Pro is always easy, just copy the DVD in whole) Want to try it? Here we go... Fire up YaST2 : Install and Remove Software Install: dhcp-server syslinux atftp (get rid of tftpd if you had it) Edit /etc/sysconfig/dhcpd and set the correct interface eg: DHCPD_INTERFACE="eth1" Edit /etc/dhcpd.conf to include: host target { hardware ethernet <mac:address:of:target:machine>; fixed-address <a.suitable.IP.number>; server-name "<IP.of.TFTP.server>"; next-server <IP.of.TFTP.server>; filename "pxelinux.0"; } That tells the recently booted machine to get pxelinux.0 by TFTP. So we need a copy of pxelinux.0 to serve: root> cp -p /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /tftpboot/pxelinux.0 pxelinux.0 is a fixed thing, the configuration comes in the next step when it comes back looking in /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ for a file named after the hosts IP in uppercase Hex. It keeps shaving digits off till there is nothing left and finally tries for "default". root> mkdir /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg Create a file /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default with: default yast label yast kernel sles9-vmlinuz.default append load_ramdisk=1 initrd=sles9-initrd.yast Copy the CDs into your NFS repository. root> cp sles9/CD1/boot/loader/linux /tftpboot/sles9-vmlinuz.default root> cp sles9/CD1/boot/loader/initrd /tftpboot/sles9-initrd.yast Hit reset on the target box and set up the bios to netboot. If you keep a terminal window (a wide one) on the server running tail -f /var/log/messages you will see the DHCP and TFTP requests being answered. On the target console you should see the YaST installer fire up. enjoy, michaelj -- Michael James michael.james@csiro.au System Administrator voice: 02 6246 5040 CSIRO Bioinformatics Facility fax: 02 6246 5166 Internet Explorer is fine for downloading Firefox, but after that....