[Fedora-livecd-list] How to PXE boot a LiveCD ?

[Sukesh Nischal]

I pretty much followed your instructions exactly but still no joy :-(

I'm wondering do I need a special initrd to accomplish this or should
this just work? I  was reading about the dracut-network package and
the livenet module. Is this required to make this work?

Also what does live:/centos_server_kvm.iso refer to ? Is a reference
to the ISO as in the initrd file? If so it doesnt appear to be there.

On 6 April 2012 18:08, Phil Meyer <pmeyer at themeyerfarm.com> wrote:
> On 04/03/2012 04:13 AM, Sukesh Nischal wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> I'm trying to setup a PXE boot environment to start a LiveCD.
>>
>> I've setup DHCP/ tftpboot and this has tested fine doing kickstart
>> installations. Next step is to be able to boot a live cd
>>
>> Ive created a custom live cd ISO which boots fine from a USB stick.
>>
>> I then ran livecd-iso-to-pxeboot to generate a tftpboot directory and
>> merged this with my existing configs.
>>
>> The problem I'm getting is that the booting stops at 'Cannot open root
>> device live:/livecd/livecd.iso'
>>
>
> This sounds like you didn't 'name' your version and it is using the default
> name, and not what it really is, or you used the wrong compression method.
>
> When making the livecd, you can name it, such as:
>
> livecd-creator --verbose --fslabel=centos_server_kvm --compression-type=gzip
> --cache=/var/tmp/livecache
> --config=http://mirror.fiber.net/ks/centos_server_kvm.ks
>
> You are welcome to examine and comment on my custom kickstart, but the trick
> here is the name.
>
> By using '--fslabel=centos_server_kvm' this works:
>
> livecd-iso-to-pxeboot `pwd`/centos_server_kvm.iso
>
> and produces:
>
> DEFAULT pxeboot
> TIMEOUT 20
> PROMPT 0
> LABEL pxeboot
>    KERNEL vmlinuz0
>    APPEND rootflags=loop initrd=initrd0.img root=live:/centos_server_kvm.iso
> rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0
> ONERROR LOCALBOOT 0
>
> Note the name change from yours.  I think that by default if no name is
> given, there may be an issue with the defaults: LiveCD vs livecd or
> something silly like that.  So just name it when you roll it up.  Its always
> better to account for assumptions between different apps.
>
> As a side note, if you are using Fedora vs CentOS/RHEL to create the livecd,
> it will default to a compression that the older kernel cannot use.
>
> This may also be the cause of your problem.
>
> Note the '--compression-type=gzip' command line argument.
>
> Between these two issues, you should be golden.
>
> Good Luck!
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