Custom WDS - Possible? - Page 2

That's not a bad piece of hardware at all. Am using one at work.

Alternatively, buy a cheaper Netgear/TP-Link that supports DD-WRT and you will have the VPN and other features of that router for much less money.

It will also let you do VLAN's off the routers built in switch, which may be useful to you.

I have been unsuccessfully trying to have enough patients to set up PXE boot for...well lets just say multiple years and leave it at that...Anyway I managed to accumulate a number of guides and links. Here a list in case some of them might help.

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Xen
http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=470 - TFTP for windows guide
http://www.savelono.com/linux/how-to-install-windows-7-over-a-network-using-linux-pxe-dnsmasq-and-samba.html
http://sysadminman.net/blog/2007/pxe-boot-winpe-2-vista-using-linux-as-the-pxe-server-8

For the CentOS one a lot of the same information/principles covered in linux-related documentation can be applied to a windows-based thing.

I would really like to encourage someone to write a guide to PXE booting for OCN. I don't think there is one. There wasn't really a detailed serious one the last time I searched anyway.
Edited by subassy - 10/19/12 at 11:58am

Turn off WDS and use this instead if you want to stay in windows.
http://www.vercot.com/~serva/

Its a WDS replacement server that also uses pxelinux as the PXE loader. So you can customize the PXE menu just as you could with any of the Linux options.

To get PXE booting, you need two things:

1 - A bootp server. Bootp is just the old version of DHCP, and is supported by virtually any DHCP server that gives you advanced configuration options (Windows, Linux, etc., but not most routers).

2 - A TFTP server. You load up whatever images you want, or even just use the server root folder as the "hard drive"

You configure the bootp server to provide the TFTP server IP address to clients, and have the TFTP server provide the data.

The ins and outs of the configuration all depends on the software you use. If you've got a domain and what not I'm guessing that you'll probably want to use the Windows DHCP server just to make things easier, in which case you can also download a TFTP server for Windows by googling it. Or run Linux in a VM and do it that way.

Serva does exactly what you're looking for; it easily PXE installs from W2000 to W8

see here
http://www.vercot.com/~serva/howto/WindowsPXE1.html

If I understand you correctly I was looking for what you were talking about for some time. I wish I was the one who came up with the solution but I can't steal credit. This allows you to run PXE boot with custom boot images (Memtest86+, etc) and WDS from the same 2008 server.

We're using this configuration now in our business so we can both deploy and diagnose from our WDS PXE boot server. DBAN, Memtest, and SpinRite all from PXE boot with a WDS option rocks.

http://thommck.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/deep-dive-combining-windows-deployment-services-pxelinux-for-the-ultimate-network-boot/

In case it ever dies I've also copied some of the text:

Text below this line is from link above

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Step One – Install WDS

This should be obvious and if you are reading this I imagine you’ve done it already. Ours is running on a Windows Server 2003 box but it should work fine with the latest, more secure, stuff.

We will be adding bits to the folders within the \\WDS\REMINST share

Step Two – Install PXELinux

PXELinux is part of the SysLinux package

Download SysLinux from here
There’s quite a bit in SysLinux but you only need to extract the following files
ZIP\core\pxelinux.0
ZIP\com32\menu\vesamenu.c32
ZIP\com32\modules\chain.c32
Copy the files into \\WDS\REMINST\Boot\x86
Rename pxelinux.0 to pxelinux.com
You also need to make copies of two original WDS files in this folder
Copy pxeboot.n12 and rename it to pxeboot.0
Copy abortpxe.com and rename it to abortpxe.0
Create to new subfolders
\\WDS\REMINST\Boot\x86\Linux
\\WDS\REMINST\Boot\x86\pxelinux.cfg
The pxelinux.cfgfolder is where you store the files that make up the PXE boot (F12) menu.
All the files we will put in there are text files, even though they don’t use a .txt extension
First create a new text file called default. This is the first menu that loads.
Paste the following text into it

DEFAULT vesamenu.c32
PROMPT 0

MENU TITLE PXE Boot Menu (x86)
MENU INCLUDE pxelinux.cfg/graphics.conf
MENU AUTOBOOT Starting Local System in 8 seconds

# Option 1 - Exit PXE Linux & boot normally
LABEL bootlocal
menu label ^Boot Normally
menu default
localboot 0
timeout 80
TOTALTIMEOUT 9000
# Option 2 - Run WDS
LABEL wds
MENU LABEL ^Windows Deployment Services
KERNEL pxeboot.0
# Option 3 - Exit PXE Linux
LABEL Abort
MENU LABEL E^xit
KERNEL abortpxe.0

Now create a text file called graphics.conf
This file controls how the menu is displayed. It’s very versatile so have a play around until it looks as basic or as flashy as you like
Paste the following text into it

MENU MARGIN 10
MENU ROWS 16
MENU TABMSGROW 21
MENU TIMEOUTROW 26
MENU COLOR BORDER 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR SCROLLBAR 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none
MENU COLOR TITLE 0 #00269B #00000000 none
MENU COLOR SEL 30;47 #40000000 #20ffffff
MENU BACKGROUND background.jpg
NOESCAPE 0
ALLOWOPTIONS 0

If you want to use a custom background, place it in the \\WDS\REMINST\Boot\x86folder.
The image should be a 640×480 jpeg file.
Make sure it has the same name as specified in the MENU BACKGROUND line in graphics.conf
Now we need to change the default boot program in WDS
Open the Windows Deployment Services Console
Right Click on your Server and select Properties
From the Boot tab change the default boot program for x86 architecture to \Boot\x86\pxelinux.com
In Server 2008 R2 you have to use the wdsutil command line to set the the default boot program with these commands

wdsutil /set-server /bootprogram:boot\x86\pxelinux.com /architecture:x86
wdsutil /set-server /N12bootprogram:boot\x86\pxelinux.com /architecture:x86