Direct MP3 Download: Geeksters #143 – Man Down!
Martin Obando, Tim Bowermeister, and Mitch Haman talk about computer repair
Episode 143 Show Notes
Title — Man Down!
Hosts:
Tim Bowermeister
Martin Obando
* The Monoprice Lightning Cable is the Best Cheap Cable for Your iPhone
* Rubik’s Solve
* It Took This Guy Over 7 Hours To Solve the World’s Hardest Rubik’s Cube
* Lenovo’s new laptop accessories are modular, stackable, weird
* AOMEI OneKey Recovery: Create Factory Recovery Partition for Windows PC
* PXE Server
PXE (Pre eXecution Environment), pronounced Pixie (as in fairy dust), is a method of having an end computer (client) boot using only its network card.
This method will be very helpful, if you want to install many systems which doesn’t have a CD/DVD device on the network or want to boot a small image quickly.
PXE environment needs:
DHCP server that distributes the IP addresses to the client systems
Windows server or DHCP running on Linux
No router
TFTP server that downloads the installation files to the PXE clients
Machine that has PXE boot image (usually Linux)
Main steps:
1. Target Machine is booted.
2. The Network Interface Card (NIC) of the machine triggers a DHCP request.
3. DHCP server intercepts the request and responds with standard information (IP, subnet mask, gateway, DNS etc.). In addition, it provides information about the location of a TFTP server and boot image (pxelinux.0).
4. When the client receives this information, it contacts the TFTP server for obtaining the boot image.
5. TFTP server sends the boot image (pxelinux.0), and the client executes it.
6. By default, the boot image searches the pxelinux.cfg directory on TFTP server for boot configuration files on the TFTP server
7. The client downloads all the files it needs (kernel and root file system), and then loads them.
Configuring DHCP Server on Windows
Using Windows DHCP, you would add scope option 066 and 067.
066 (Boot Server Host Name): 192.168.1.100 (DHCP Server)
067 – Bootfile Name: pxelinux.0
DHCP on Linux
option bootfile-name “pxelinux.0”;
What do I use PXE Server for?
What type of hardware do I need?
Minimal – Raspberry Pi
Ubuntu 14.10 PXE server installation
Install And Configure PXE Server On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
What Is Network Booting (PXE) and How Can You Use It?
HOWTO: PXE booting Ubuntu Installer
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E-mail
Hey Martin,
I’m one of your many listeners of Geeksters. I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least say “Awesome Show”. It’s always very informative, with good humor thrown in!
I was watching Episode 140 when you and Tim were discussing Clonezilla. I am the tech at a private school in Northern Virginia, and I have used Clonezilla countless times to deploy updated Xubuntu installations to the students’ computers – one at a time, via the Live USB method.
You stated when you go to a lab, you have it on a PXE boot server. Do you do mass-deployments using it (that is what I’d like to do)? Is that a dedicated server or a USB drive with the server software installed on it? Did you use any particular guides to set it up or just the documentation on Clonezilla’s website? There are so many guides out there, either too old, or seeming to skip/not explain steps. I am pretty proficient in Linux now, but there’s still more to learn!
Any assistance would be most appreciated,
Thanks,
Mike
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I have tested it and it works great!
If you have these customers that poison or foul up their systems you can save time by installing this and just one click it to get Windows reinstalled. Also I like to test on real hardware rather than a VM so I installed this on real hardware and install viruses, new software, etc. Then I just roll it back. m
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