pxe LiveCD setup

[Warren Block]

On Sat, 3 Jul 2010, Carl Chave wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
>> Is there a quick way to set up a PXE boot menu for booting into a number of
>> ISO images?  There's net/pxe, but it looks like only part of the solution.
>>
>> Ideally, there'd just be a minimal setup with a directory of ISO files and a
>> built-in loader that lets the user choose which ISO to boot.
>> _______________________________________________
>
> I've had a lot of luck with grub4dos.  At work I use it to present a
> menu to the PXE client.  I've had most success booting .iso files by
> having grub4dos memory map them, so having a fair amount of ram is
> helpful.  I've used it to boot damn small linux, puppy linux, Dell
> diagnostic cd .iso, dban iso, spinrite .iso etc.

After a very cursory setup, it works!  I took notes and will write it up 
in a bit.

The only complaint I have so far is the speed of download via tftp.  A 
236M ISO took two minutes to load, or about 2M per second.  A full CD 
takes a long, long time.  Is that typical, or maybe just the poor 
Ethernet on this Aspire One D250?