PXE Boot Server Configuration Using Linux

PXE is an acronym for Pre-Boot Execution Environment. To know what it does refer to the Pre-Boot Execution Environment page.

This document is a guide to configuration of a PXE boot server using Linux. It will be assumed that you already have an existing network with a Linux server that is responsible for assignment of DHCP addressing for your workstations. There are other guides to cover the configuration of a DHCP server.

You will need to install whatever packages are appropriate for your distribution to have PXE and TFTP.

Redhat / Trustix Guide

1. You need to obtain the RPM package for PXE and the RPM package for TFTP and install them on the server.

2. Activate TFTP in xinetd

• disable=yes to disable=no in /etc/xinetd.d/tftp
• service xinetd restart

3. Get OS ready in the tftpboot directory

4. Put the pxe boot linux kernel in the tftpboot directory

5. Configure /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

6. Create default configuration /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default