Practical Network Booting

[oDii]

Recently I've been investigating network booting, and believe it would be of great assistance to what I do (small scale computer building). What I'm aiming for is a system where I can nLite an image on my 2k3 server (not this one) via RDP, stick it in a folder and have it served to the computer I'd be building at the time. The problem is, PXE booting requires absolutely tiny images so even Memtesting via this isn't possible.

Currently my setup is pretty simple. I have smoothwall doing the DHCP and routing, and I had setup a small TFTP client on the 2k3 box. Is what I want to do possible (ie. without doing funky stuff with linux and creating a small partition on the receiving PC)?

 

[cmetz]

oDii, PXE pulls in a boot loader, which can then pull in a reasonably arbitrary sized image. For example, see pxegrub. Booting memtest works like a champ with pxegrub, as does booting several remote-clone/restore tools.

 

[oDii]

Ah, thanks for putting me in the right direction; will report back as to how it goes.

 

[Rilex]

If you have a 2003 box, RIS (or WDS as of 2003 SP2). RIS will allow you to store multiple images as well as various tools for diagnostics, etc (even BartPE CDs, for instance). WDS will bring hardware-independent images as well as a WinPE-based OS for imaging.