VMware vSphere

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/371

PXE_Installer-Recovery is a complete Linux OS installation and multi-OS recovery appliance

If someone may be looking for an PXE boot server for ending up with getting "full function linux clients" booted via the network without additional installation he may be interested having a "short look" onto the "Rapid Mappit Resumator" appliance inside the virtual appliances directory as well.

If someone may be looking for an PXE boot server for

ending up with getting "full function linux clients"

They might try the one I created :smileywink:

booted via the network without additional

installation he may be interested having a "short

look" onto the "Rapid Mappit Resumator" appliance

inside the virtual appliances directory as well.

Interesting, but looking through the very lengthy and overwhelming instructions on how to use the "Rapid Mappit Resumator" appliance, it seems to have many configurations that need to be performed before being able to install to clients, and the clients need a good deal of configuration post-install, as well.

I am also not exactly sure how your comment appies to the PXE appliance that I created, other than to attempt to advertise your own, bhanitzsch...

Cool appliance! I was working on doing this, but never got enough time. Now I can focus on adding a network based VMware deployment server!

I had one question for you: Where did you get info on editing .msg files. I see Syslinux has info on codes, but I'm not sure what to use to edit them. Any help is appreciated.

Great job on a nice appliance!

Dave

btw- Can't believe that shameless self promotion!!!

Ok, I'm answering my own question. Using vi there are several ways to enter/edit control codes. CTRL-V worked the best for me:

CTRL-V Insert next non-digit literally. For special keys, the

terminal code is inserted. It's also possible to enter the

decimal, octal or hexadecimal value of a character

\ |i_CTRL-V_digit|.

The characters typed right after CTRL-V are not considered for

mapping. \{Vi: no decimal byte entry}

Note: When CTRL-V is mapped (e.g., to paste text) you can

often use CTRL-Q instead |i_CTRL-Q|.

Hi, was wondering if anybody can give a small tutorial on how to use RIP.

I PXE booted my Fujitsu laptop (which contains Win XP SP2) and selected the RIP option. My laptop continued to boot until it reached "ns83820.c: National Semiconductor DP83820 10/100/1000 driver" then it just stops. Now what? I've been reading the docs from RIPLINUX site but can't find any doc on basic usage.

Thanks in advance.

First, have you tried the latest version? Grab the iso and boot from CD, if that works, and you plan on using RIP for more boxen, just replace the PXE image on your PXE installer VM.

http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/

(Kent's email address is at the bottom of the page, too - I'm sure that if you are having trouble with the latest image, he might like to hear about it :smileywink: )

I just download the PXE Installer and Recovery Appliance . I fired up the VM and start testing . Vmware client boot up .....and startup screen shows up. All nice and easy up to this point.First one i try memetest and its working fine .Next was free dos .At this point start the problems . When i try to install free dos on client it start complaining that source disk is missing . Same problem was at centos install. Centos offer me a few way's (http,ftp and so on) to locate install source but.... no one works out . Rip option work out fine (i see there midnight comander and partition image utilities ) but i need MC and partimaged on server side too . Its useless to me if i can start partimage only on client side when i need to backup/restore a client. I download the RHEL 4 ES iso image and try to add to server ....and after 2 hour of work i cant make it work . So i have a few questions here :

1.How to install mc and partimaged to server ?

2.How to solve the "missing instalation source " problem?

3.How to add a new image to server ?

Thanks

Is there any documentation on adding network drivers to this VM? I have been using this appliance for some time now and haven't had any issues, but we've recently started to deploy some newer laptops that use the R61 driver set, which isn't found within the base VM. Any guidance on this matter would be helpful.

Thanks!

I'm am really interested in trying out this appliance, however it (like alot of other appliance torrents) are no longer availalable. I've tried to download a number of different PXE related appliances, but they all seam to be dead torrents. :smileyangry:

mshuler: i'm sorry, :smileyhappy: it looks like your post is blank.

"To reply to this message, either reply to this email (recommended)" doesn't seem to work anymore.. sigh..

Anyway, this VM is elderly, has not been updated since it was written, nor will not be in the future, but at least it will be a good primer for setting up a featureful PXE server :smileyhappy:

If you can't use a bittorrent client, feel free to pull it from here (1.55GB):

http://www.pbandjelly.net/vmware_challenge/PXE_Installer-Recovery_1.0.tar.bz2

Kind Regards,

Michael

Michael