PXE Booting Fedora 17 LiveCD - Is this KickStart Issue?

[delicatepc]

Hi Folks,

I am attempting to boot the Fedora 17 Live CD experience over PXE. I have downloaded the Fedora 17 iso, extracted it to my tftp server and created the following syslinux menu entry:

LABEL -	
MENU LABEL Fedora
	KERNEL linux/fedora/isolinux/vmlinuz0
	APPEND repo=nfs:IP:/export/tftpboot/linux/fedora
	INITRD linux/fedora/isolinux/initrd0.img

This does not work. I then download the Fedora 17 DVD and it has a folder called images/pxeboot which has initrd.img (vs the initrd0.img in the Live CD version) and changed my menu entry to point to the new initrd.img (which I have copied from the DVD edition into the LiveCD extracted copy on my tftp server):

LABEL -	
MENU LABEL Fedora
	KERNEL linux/fedora/isolinux/vmlinuz0
	APPEND repo=nfs:IP:/export/tftpboot/linux/fedora
	INITRD linux/fedora/isolinux/initrd.img

This successfully boots Fedora 17 into a "New User Wizard". GREAT! However when i try to install from the currently loaded up image I quickly realize the "Install" icon or Live User account is no where to be found.

How can I recreate the Fedora 17 Live CD boot experience when booting over PXE? I thought it be a "Kickstart" issue but I couldnt seem to find a ks file in either the LiveCD or DVD.

Thoughts or Suggestions?

-dpc

[cazo]

I haven't confirmed this works for network booting, but the livecd-tools package contains a script called livecd-iso-to-pxeboot, which will create a pxeboot image from the LiveCD iso.

[root@localhost ~]# livecd-iso-to-pxeboot Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso

Your pxeboot image is complete.

Copy tftpboot/ subdirectory to /tftpboot or a subdirectory of /tftpboot.
Set up your DHCP, TFTP and PXE server to serve /tftpboot/.../pxeboot.0

Note: The initrd image contains the whole CD ISO and is consequently
very large.  You will notice when pxebooting that initrd can take a
long time to download.  This is normal behaviour.

The tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default created is:

DEFAULT pxeboot
TIMEOUT 20
PROMPT 0
LABEL pxeboot
	KERNEL vmlinuz0
	APPEND rootflags=loop initrd=initrd0.img root=live:/Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 
ONERROR LOCALBOOT 0

[lala4yaya]

Originally Posted by cazo

I haven't confirmed this works for network booting, but the livecd-tools package contains a script called livecd-iso-to-pxeboot, which will create a pxeboot image from the LiveCD iso.

[root@localhost ~]# livecd-iso-to-pxeboot Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso

Your pxeboot image is complete.

Copy tftpboot/ subdirectory to /tftpboot or a subdirectory of /tftpboot.
Set up your DHCP, TFTP and PXE server to serve /tftpboot/.../pxeboot.0

Note: The initrd image contains the whole CD ISO and is consequently
very large.  You will notice when pxebooting that initrd can take a
long time to download.  This is normal behaviour.

The tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default created is:

DEFAULT pxeboot
TIMEOUT 20
PROMPT 0
LABEL pxeboot
	KERNEL vmlinuz0
	APPEND rootflags=loop initrd=initrd0.img root=live:/Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 
ONERROR LOCALBOOT 0

Using that info (thanks!) I was able to load the live user env but tftp was kind of dodgy for such a huge initrd and the transfer failed more than half the time.

I managed to make an iPXE file that will get the kernel and initrd via http and chainload that off of my existing pxe menu.

My menu entry looks like this:

MENU LABEL Fedora 17 (64-bit) live
        KERNEL  undionly.kpxe
  	TEXT HELP
        Fedora 17 64-bit live
        ENDTEXT

I compiled the undionly.kpxe from git src using

make bin/undionly.kpxe EMBED=fedora.ipxe

Where fedora.ipxe is a user created script containing:

#!ipxe
dhcp net0
imgfetch h\t\t\p\:/\/\192.168.1.2/fedora/tftpboot/initrd0.img
kernel h\t\t\p\:\/\/192.168.1.2/fedora/tftpboot/vmlinuz0
boot vmlinuz0 rootflags=loop initrd=initrd0.img root=live:/Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0

*My kpxe and or dnsmasq fails at DNS so I had to use an ip based vhost in apache.
** I broke up the http above with backslashes so the automod didn't think I was posting links. (this is my first post).

I'll say that its not very snappy in the VM I've been testing it on, but it is faster than the tftp transfer method.
ipxe and gpxe both support a bunch of other protocols too, very interesting projects they are.