PXE booting over internet (iPXE)

[Diatech]

Hello;

I was attempting to setup a PXE boot server over the WAN to be able to boot images from my home windows Server 2008 box. (I understand it will be slow, I want it as an emergency backup)

iPXE supports booting over the wan, but I don't understand the example that is given.

See : http://ipxe.org/_detail/screenshots/ipxedemo.png?id=start

I understand the commands to invoke this boot (Technically this is booting from http, but I'm just going to install apache on my win server box and host the images as a private website) but I don't understand what is going on on the HTTP end.

I checked the php file that the url pointed to (http://boot.ipxe.org/demo/boot.php) and got this code :

Code: [Select]

#!ipxe

kernel vmlinuz-2.6.17-14mdv bootfile=http://boot.ipxe.org/demo/boot.php fastboot
initrd initrd.img
boot
 
I don't see from that where the actual image is stored, and if there is anything else I need to install/configure. The documentation is a little lacking,and Im not quite sure how much is proprietary to iPXE and how much it relates to PXE booting in general (which I have no experience with).

Any help is appreciated.
-Diatech

[DaveLembke]

Interesting... I would think that over the internet you would have to flash your NIC's BootROM to point to an IP to pick up the PXE service from, otherwise your NIC would pick up on the first PXE Boot service detected when outbound looking for PXE which could be someone elses iPXE broadcast. I wasnt aware of an iPXE and am going to have to read up on how this works.

[DaveLembke]

http://ipxe.org/howto/romburning/intel

Looks like my guess that you will need to flash your NICs bootRom is correct for iPXE

I've never flashed my NICs BootROM for anything like this so its at your own risk if you BRICK your NIC 
Last time I flashed my BootRom was to bring a bunch of Intel Pro 100+ Management Adapters to latest version from the prior older flashes to make them uniform latest version for PXE Boot for RIS service. Bought 20 of them off of ebay for like $15 and they were a mix of very old to newer Rom flash versions. Booted a Pentium 75 off a floppy disk with DOS 6.22 and flashed them manually 1 by 1 until all 20 were latest version from Intel.

[Diatech]

http://ipxe.org/howto/romburning/intel

Looks like my guess that you will need to flash your NICs bootRom is correct for iPXE

I've never flashed my NICs BootROM for anything like this so its at your own risk if you BRICK your NIC 
Last time I flashed my BootRom was to bring a bunch of Intel Pro 100+ Management Adapters to latest version from the prior older flashes to make them uniform latest version for PXE Boot for RIS service. Bought 20 of them off of ebay for like $15 and they were a mix of very old to newer Rom flash versions. Booted a Pentium 75 off a floppy disk with DOS 6.22 and flashed them manually 1 by 1 until all 20 were latest version from Intel.

It also comes in the bootable iso variety

I work on a lot of client computers, and just need a backup for when i forget an iso athome, haha