1

I've been searching for a solution to this and have not found anything definitive yet.

We run a TFTP server on a Linux host and can PXE boot systems to a menu system we have constructed for it. What we want to be able to do is add an additional menu item to the PXE menu configuration file on the Linux server, so that our Windows admins can PXE boot systems and have them directed over to a WDS server that is running on a Windows 2008 server.

So far all I've found are lots of examples on how to use WDS to deploy Linux systems, here for example.

But there seems to be nothing out there on how to use WDS through a pxelinux menu that's sitting on a Linux TFTP server. I've seen some references to using pxechain.com, but not many details about it, and so far my experiments have not yielded any success.

Is anyone doing this? If so do you have a working example config you can share?

Thanks, Matt

Update

I've kind of got a solution. Using the link above I created a PXE menu on the WDS server. Our DHCP is configured to initially send PXE requests to the WDS server where the menu gives them a choice to boot Windows or Linux. Windows just boots into the WinPE WDS stuff. The Linux menu uses an iPXE compiled file to reset the PXE and send the requests off to a Linux webserver where all our Linux builds live.

It's a little cludgy, but it seems to work ok.

Matt

Improve this question
1
  • Maybe something with gPXE?
    – Mark
    May 13, 2011 at 15:55

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

PXE sounds a bit late to me. I'd rather configure the DHCP server to give those windows systems their boot server and not the linux TFTP server: http://tspycher.com/booting-into-wds-windows-deployment-service-from-linux-dhcpd/

Improve this answer
1
  • We can do that, in fact already have just to test and see it work. However, then we have to manage two configurations. We want a one-stop shop menu system. So no matter what OS you want, you can install it. There will also be different utils like Parted, disk utils, memory utils, etc in those menus. I'm trying to avoid the duplication of effort.
    – Matt Mencel
    Apr 25, 2011 at 21:35
0

I've never done this, and I'd love to be able to, and so while looking around, it seems to me that one could use the rom-o-matic to create a gPXE bootable ISO, and some embedded script magic (click "customize") to boot the WDS image from WDS' TFTP server. At that point, you could add the generated .ISO to your existing boot menu.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .