Booting the Fedora installer with PXE

Launching the Fedora installer over the network, as well as having a local mirror of the Fedora repository, means you don’t need to burn a CD or DVD. It’s a convenient way of trying out a new distro.

I’ve done this for Fedora 8. I have a local Fedora repository on my Fedora 7 gateway. You need a working DHCP server, which I won’t cover here. To get the network boot working I did this:

1. install tftp-server. Ensure it’s enabled (chkconfig tftp-server on).
2. install syslinux. Copy /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 into /tftpboot.
3. create the directory /tftpboot/fedora8 and copy the contents of Fedora/i386/os/images/pxeboot into it.
4. create the directory /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg and put this default file in that directory.
5. add the following options to your dhcpd.conf (change 111.222.333.444 to your server’s IP address):

   next-server 111.222.333.444;
   filename "pxelinux.0";
   

If you boot the client machine, it should automatically boot the Fedora installer.