Configuring PXE Boot server on RHEL 6/CentOS 6

                

Step 1: First Set the static IP address

     #vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

     BOOTPROTO=static

     IPADDR=192.168.0.254

     NETMASK=255.255.255.0

     GATEWAY=192.168.0.254

     DNS1=192.168.0.254

:wq (save and exit)

     Now Restart the network service

     #service network restart

     #chkconfig network on

Step 2: Insert the RHEL 6 dvd into DVD ROM and mount it. 

#mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/

Now you need to configure YUM server to install packages, so use the following step to configure YUM server. for more information about package management, please visit my previous blog.

#cd /mnt/Packages/

#rpm -ivh vsftpd<tab>

#rpm -ivh deltarpm<tab>

#rpm -ivh python-deltarpm<tab>

#rpm -ivh createrepo<tab>

Note-: deltarpm, python-deltarpm both are dependencies of createrepo package.

Now copy entire RHEL 6 dvd into /var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd

Note-: before copying RHEL 6 DVD, first insure that, you have enough disk space in /var/ftp/pub or not.

#mkdir -p /var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd

#cp -rvf /mnt/* /var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd

Now create a repo file for yum server

#cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

#rm -rf *

#vim yum.repo

[server]

name=PXE server

baseurl=file:///var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd

enabled=1

gpgcheck=0

:wq (save and exit)

Now Create local repository for YUM server

#createrepo -v /var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd

Setp 3: Now install httpd, and kickstart, packages using yum server

#yum install httpd system-config-kickstart -y

Now create a soft link of /var/ftp/pub/ into /var/www/html/ directory, so that you can access this repository and installation tree using FTP and HTTP protocol.

#ln -s /var/ftp/pub/ /var/www/html/

Now fix your SELinux security context by using "restorecon" command

#restorecon -R /var/www/html/

#restorecon -R /var/ftp/pub/

Now restart your services of "vsftpd" and "httpd"

#service vsftpd restart

#chkconfig vsftpd on

#service httpd restart

#chkconfig httpd on

Step 4: Now create a kickstart file for unattend installation for RHEL 6 and save into /var/ftp/pub/ with the name of workstation.cfg

Step 5: Now install syslinux, xinetd, tftp-server, dhcp using yum

#yum install syslinux xinetd tftp-server dhcp -y

Now create a "pxelinux.cfg" directory in /var/lib/tftpboot/ directory

#mkdir /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

Now copy "pxelinux.0" file from /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 to /var/lib/tftpboot/ directory

#cp  /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0  /var/lib/tftpboot/

Now enable your tftp server, because default is disable. and start the tftp server. 

#vim /etc/xinetd.d/tftp

Disable=no

#service xinetd restart

chkconfig xinetd on

Step 6: Configure DHCP 

First copy the dhcpd.conf.sample file into /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

#cp /usr/share/doc/dhcp-4.1.1/dhcpd.conf.sample /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

Now Edit dhcpd.conf file according to your network

#vim /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

Allow booting;

Allow bootp;

authoritative;

#This is the very basic subnet declaration.

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

       range  192.168.0.1   192.168.0.50;

       option routers      192.168.0.254;

       option domain-name  "example.com";

       option domain-name-servers 192.168.0.254;

       default-lease-time  21600;

       max-lease-time      43200;

#PXE client IP range

       range dynamic-bootp 192.168.0.51  192.168.0.100;

       filename      "pxelinux.0";

       next-server   192.168.0.254;

}

:wq (save and exit)

#service dhcpd restart

#chkconfig dhcpd on 

Step 7: Now copy the following files from RHEL 6 DVD into /var/lib/tftpboot/ directory 

#cd /var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd/images/pxeboot/

#cp vmlinuz  /var/lib/tftpboot/

#cp initrd.img  /var/lib/tftpboot/

#cp /usr/share/syslinux/menu.c32 /var/lib/tftpboot/

#cd /var/ftp/pub/rhel6/dvd/isolinux/

#cp -rvf * /var/lib/tftpboot/

Now you need to create a boot menu 

#vim /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

       default vesamenu.c32

       #prompt 1

       timeout 600

       display boot.msg

       menu background splash.jpg

       menu title Welcome to the RHEL 6 PXE Installation!

       label local

       menu label boot from ^local drive

       menu default

       localboot 0xffff

       label ws

       menu label Install RHEL 6 ^workstation

       kernel vmlinuz

append biosdevname=0 ksdevice=link load_ramdisk=1 initrd=initrd.img network ks=http://192.168.0.254/pub/workstation.cfg noipv6

:wq (save and exit )

Now boot your client machine using PXE and enjoy................!