Custom SYSLINUX For TFTP Install

1.   Introduction
2.   Menus

Introduction

I need a current version of SYSLINUX because the version available in the Debian and Ubuntu packages (when I frist wrote this article) did not support the Advanced menu options I wanted to use.

 wget -c http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.54.tar.bz2 - O /usr/local/src/syslinux-3.54.tar.bz2

To extract without creating the directory structure, use 'pax'.

 apt-get install pax

Now we will...

• Remove 'pxelinux.0' that came in the Debian/Ubuntu netboot archives
• Extract the required files from the SYSLINUX archive and copy them to the TFTP server path.

 cd
 rm /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0
 pax -jrvf /usr/local/src/syslinux-3.54.tar.bz2 -s,syslinux-3.54/com32/modules/,, syslinux-3.54/com32/modules/menu.c32
 pax -jrvf /usr/local/src/syslinux-3.54.tar.bz2 -s,syslinux-3.54/,, syslinux-3.54/pxelinux.0  
 mv menu.c32 /var/lib/tftpboot/
 mv pxelinux.0 /var/lib/tftpboot/

Menus

We need to replace the '/var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg' with one of our own which will enable us modify the menus to boot either the Debian or Ubuntu installers.

 rm /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
 mkdir -p /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

Now create the default menu.

 vi /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

Sample

 DEFAULT menu.c32
 ONTIMEOUT skip
 PROMPT 0
 TIMEOUT 100
  
 MENU TITLE Flexion.Org
 
 LABEL skip
         MENU LABEL ^Boot from Hard Disk
         LOCALBOOT 0
 
 LABEL etch
         MENU LABEL ^Debian 4.0r2 (Etch)
         CONFIG etch-installer/i386/pxelinux.cfg/default
 
 LABEL gutsy
         MENU LABEL ^Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)
         CONFIG gutsy-installer/i386/pxelinux.cfg/default
 
 LABEL reload
         MENU LABEL ^Reload
         kernel pxelinux.0

At this point, you can PXE boot and install either Debian or Ubuntu via the Internet

$Id: CustomSYSLINUXForTFTPInstall,v 1.8 2008/01/08 06:17:11 martin Exp $