discuss: [Proposal] PXE Server HOWTO
Subject:
Re: [Proposal] PXE Server HOWTO
From:
####@####.####
Date:
28 Jan 2002 18:10:52 -0000
Message-Id: <E16VGEb-0003DN-00@big-guy.sychron.com>
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I replied to Keith offlist, since the minutiae of PXE didn't seem
directly relevant to linuxdoc; I suggest that those of us interested
form a pxe-howto-authors mail list somewhere. However, the following
comment does seem relevant to the nature of an LDP document.
> > PXE is pre-boot execution environment. Basically you boot off your network
> > card (by boot ROM or ROM Img on floppy), dhcp an address, and load a pre-os
> > environment from a server which can allow you to partition, format, install,
> > etc. to the client machine. I'm sure you've seen "network" as a choice in
> > your BIOS boot order selection. This would be a HUGE step in the right
> > direction of enabling system administrators to easily do mass roll-outs of
> > Linux over Windows clients (for that microsoft-free utopian society :)
> This sounds like it could be useful for bare metal restore, aka
> complete backup & recovery. I have a HOWTO in the pipeline on exactly
> that, so will be interested to see what you come up with.
Network booting is indeed a very useful way to do this sort of thing: I
network boot Red Hat kickstart - it's easy to break up a bootable floppy
image and reassemble a net bootable image. I have a net bootable image
with GNU PartEd for manipulating disks (even unbootable ones). A net
bootable recovery image is a great idea.
My comment is that these are features of net booting in general and
*not* PXE per se. One of my contributions will be a section noting that
PXE is *not* synonymous with net booting, any more than the BIOSen we
find in our motherboards are the only way to initialise hardware, and
providing references on how to avoid PXE altogther, such as Etherboot
and LinuxBIOS. See www.linuxbios.org to learn how irrelevant Phoenix,
Award, AMI, etc products are to Linux.
PXE is just a spec for one way - Intel's way, now adopted by other
hardware vendors - to do net booting. A way to add clunky[*] slow[*]
buggy[*] network functions to a clunky[*] slow[*] buggy[*] BIOS. The
point of PXE for most Linux users - which therefore should, IMHO, be the
focus of a LDP PXE howto - is that, like the BIOS, it's what we are
stuck with when we take a new system out of the box.
A coherent body of LDP docs on booting in general, hardware support,
DHCP/TFTP, backup + recovery and so on should rightly include a PXE
howto. An LDP document should *not* imply that PXE is a desirable way of
network booting or (worse) that LDP (or the Linux project or Linus or
any related open source person or body) in any way recommends it. I hope
that the LDP reviewers would not let such a suggestion (or even a phrase
that might be construed as such by Intel's PR department) into a LDP
doc. Utopia is as free of PXE and BIOS vendors as it is of M$.
Peter
PS I should add that my employer's product is closed-source software for
clusters, but unrelated to network booting and I'm aware of no plans to
move into this area. If this changes, I'll tell all interested parties.
[*] I'll provide examples and references to anyone who may think I'm
just Intel bashing, but I think the facts are undisputable. For what
it's worth, I think I understand why Intel designed PXE the way they
did, and to be fair, the commercial alternatives I've seen are all
worse. I merely observe that open source works far better for Linux and
may soon even do the job better for MS products.
