#
# Below are the contents of the README file included with the 
# pxeconfig.tar.gz package downloaded from here:
#
#  ftp://ftp.sara.nl/pub/outgoing/pxeconfig.tar.gz
#

PXE-utilities
-------------

This is a release of the SARA package of utilities that we use to boot
our nodes with PXE-enabled network cards. This was developed because we
always want to use the PXE-enabled network card as our first boot device.
With pxelinux, which is a derivative of syslinux, you can specify with a PXE
configuration file how the node must boot. This configuration is placed in,
e.g. '/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg' directory.

In our setup we have a default setup. The default setup is to boot from
harddisk. When a node boots it fetches the default configuration file and the
configuration file tells the node to boot from the harddisk. This setup
is used for nodes that have already been installed by systemimager.

At SARA we have developed the following  strategy how to install a fresh node.

 1) The ip-address in our setup is known for the new node. So
    we make a link in the '/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg' directory to a
    pxe config file which tells that it has to fetch the kernel en
    root filesystem from our bootserver, eg:
         0A000A02 ---> default.node_install (10.0.10.2)

 2) The client starts and  uses the systemimager software to install
    the node. The last line of installation script connects to a
    daemon on the bootserver. This daemon will remove the PXE config file
    for this node.

 3) The node reboots and will use the default pxe config file which will
    instruct the node to boot from harddisk.

This release contains the following utilities:

  pxeconfigd)
     This is daemon that removes the pxe configuration file of a node.

  pxeconfig)
     With this program we can specify which pxe config file
     a node or nodes must use. This utility will create the links
     in '/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg'

  hexls)
      Is a utility that diplays a directory, and, if in this directory
      contains HEX files, it will convert them to IP-numbers.


All these utilities are written in Python.

Comments or Suggestions mail them to:
Bas van der Vlies <basv@sara.nl>
http://www.sara.nl for more info about SARA.