Source
r/sysadmin•
Network-Fu

Need help finding a PXE boot solution utilizing multiple OS images

The problem I'm trying to solve is that our company employs a number of engineers. They work with a lot of old industrial controllers, PXI/VXI/VME etc., etc. that they'd like to be able to boot from multiple different OS images. Some of the peripheral cards they're using to test stuff only works on software release 1.2 of some software but others need 1.8. Stuff like that.

 

So what I'd like to be able to do is set up a pxe boot library that allows them to choose from a list of OS images. Once booted they would still need to be able to load drivers/ interact with peripheral hardware. Most of the images would be windows but some older stuff goes back as far as windows 98. Also if it were possible to limit the number of options they're offered based on MAC address that would be awesome but by no means mandatory.

 

I of course will want to have this set up on it's own LAN so that security isn't an issue. Any help/guidance you can offer as to a way to do this would be great. Thanks!

Posted Nov 5, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

35
mudclubHow does computers work?•

google 'pxe menu'

2
saeraphasWhiskey, Double•

I use PXELINUX and iPXE for this - works really well for DOS floppies and small CD images actually. It's even possible to boot winXP off iSCSI, though I don't know how you'd manage win98.

Here's some snippets from my config just to give you an idea what's possible:

LABEL dban
	MENU LABEL Disk Sanitizer
	MENU INDENT 1
	KERNEL http://netboot/dban/dban.bzi
	APPEND nuke="dwipe --autonuke --method zero" vga=785
	TEXT HELP
	Zero-fill all attached disks, single pass. 
	ENDTEXT

LABEL lenovom92p
	MENU LABEL Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge M92P BIOS January 2015
	MENU INDENT 1
	KERNEL http://netboot/memdisk
	INITRD http://netboot/bios/lenovom92p-9sj987usa.iso
	APPEND iso
	TEXT HELP
	Updates Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge M92P to BIOS revision 9SJ987, 2015-01-22
	ENDTEXT
2
Network-FuOP•

Thanks. This is really helpful actually. I don't know if I'll be able to get windows 98 to run or not but I'm going to give it a go.

1
SupermathieSr. Sysadmin, Consultant, VAR•

You should be able to use iPXE to hook in an iSCSI disk and boot that, that should do you.

1
QdelBastardo•

i second pxelinux. Have it setup pointing to all of my wipe/test/reimage tools. It wasn't awful to set up at all.

1