PXE on 7.0 problem and solution

[Erik Cederstrand]

Tim Clewlow wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> Installing 7.0 via PXE has a slight problem that is easily worked around. The
> file /boot/mfsroot.gz on the installation media needs to be unzipped to make
> PXE boot via tftp/nfs work. Otherwise the loader ultimately complains that it
> cant find the device to boot from. For example, if you have the installation
> media living at /usr/pxe/nfs/ on the PXE server, then do:
> 
> gzip -d /usr/pxe/nfs/boot/mfsroot.gz
> 
> After doing this it now loads the kernel and starts the installation procedure
> as expected. Someone more knowledgeable than me might want to let whoever needs
> to know about this.
> 
> Apart from that, it looks great, the work is appreciated, thanks for the new
> release :-)

I've had problems with other files fetched over NFS in the past. In 
theory (at least that's what a tcpdump says), it should be possible to 
provide all files gzipped, and even split the files in smaller chunks. 
Files are tried in this order:

boot/loader.rc.split
boot/loader.rc.gz.split
boot/loader.rc.gz
boot/loader.rc


However, I only got the plain files to work reliably.

Erik