Network Booting Kit

This kit was created for the purpose of creating network booting environment on Scientific Flight computer for the ISS-CREAM (International Space Station - Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) Project.

This document will serve as a concise tutorial in setting up pxebooting environment using DHCP, TFTP and NFS.

By Sean Bae

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NOTE

• We assume your host server uses Scientific Linux (or compatible subset of RedHat distribution).

• We assume that your host server and your client computer are connected through host-only network or Ethernet.

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STEPS:

1. Install DHCP, TFTP, and NFS in your host server by entering a simple command on terminal yum install dhcp tftp nfs on your host server

2. Change your directory to /etc folder and replace your current dhcpd.conf file with the one inside this kit

3. Open the new (one from this kit) dhcpd.conf file and follow the commented instruction (written in the configuration document) to configure your DHCP server settings with your correct server addresses so that it would point to your pxelinux.0 file (which we set up in step 5)

4. Enable the TFTP server by modifying your /etc/xinetd.d/tftp file (set disable=no and server_args=/tftpboot -s)

5. Copy the tftpboot and master folder in this kit to your root directory

6. Modify the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default file so that NFS can point to the correct server. To do this, set nfsroot parameter to your ip address followed by the /master/diskless/sl5/i386/cd (there is an example written on the default file)

7. Finally start portmapper and NFS by running the start file in this package (You need to run this script every time you reboot your server)

8. Start up your client machine (SFC) and when you reach a Scientific Linux boot screen, type sl5diskless and press enter to complete the network booting process

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TROUBLESHOOTING

• If for some reason the SFC cannot connect to DHCP or TFTP server, it might be that your server's firewall is blocking external connection by default. To allow SFC to network boot, type the command iptables -F (it will flush your firewall settings).

• If the server refuse to execute any of the steps above, you might not be logged in as root. If you do not have root account access, you can alternatively use the sudo command.

• If you cannot copy of modify some files, try to change permission settings of files by chmod 777 FILENAME to give permission to read/write/execute to everyone.