Cant get Network booting / PXE to work??

[isoaga]

Hey all, i'm trying to setup an openMosix cluster at uni and i've decided to give the Knoppix LiveCD a go. Anyways, i run the openMosix Terminal server from the menu and use the default settings and it seems to work fine however when i boot any of the other PXE enabled machines in the room nothing happens, they just sit there waiting for a DHCP server to boot from. One of my questions was where does the client machine look for a server? Or does it just wait for a specific packet type to show up? An also, since this is at uni, there is another normal DHCP server that assigns all IPs and whatnot to the machines, what does the PXE system do if there is more than one server to on the network to boot from?

Edit: Oh, and after reading through the forum a bit more it looks as though having two DHCP servers on the same network is a problem that is yet to be solved, but anyways, even after unplugging from the external network, ie from the other dhcp server i still cannot see my server??

For starters how do i tell if the terminal server is running?

i did a ps -A and there is an entry for in.tfptd , is that it?

Any help would be great, Thanx.

[isoaga]

OK, still haven't made much progress, but i have another question for those who have gotten the PXE network booting to work,

Do i have to setup a dhcp server first, then run the terminal server or does running the terminal server do that by itself?

My thoughts are that i first have to set up a dhcp server, then run ther terminal server however when i try to start the dhcp server i get an error and it refers me to syslog, however syslog contains nothing. also i am unsure as what to put in the dhcp.conf file to get the dhcp server to function, could someone who has this working please post an example.

thanx.

[garyng]

With my limited knowledge about PXE, here is the general sequence :

1. the PXE capable workstation would send out certain packets to search for DHCP server asking for information

2. the DHCP server would respond with a lot of things including where is the TFTP server to download the boot images

3. the PXE workstation using this information would retrieve the boot image from the TFTP server and boot load it.

4. most probably than not, the boot image also need a NFS server for mounting its root

So the 'terminal server' is just a collective term and not one single service or demon. In order to make these to work, you need :

a DHCP server that tell PXE where is the TFTP server
a TFTP server to hold the boot image and other stuff like initrd
a NFS server for the root fs

[isoaga]

garyng: hey thanx for the info, so tomorrow at uni i'll try setting up a dhcp sever on one of the knoppix machines and then running ther terminal server. One question though, the uni already has a dhcp server, what happens if i set up another one, the IT department is likely to come in and kick my ass again, any thoughts?

Thanx

[isoaga]

I just thought of something, why does the terminal server setup screens ask you to specify the ip range of those computers that will be booting form it, it would seem to me that those values are those which a dhcp server would assign to them, ie it would seem that running the terminal server from the menu appears to setup the dhcp server itself, am i correct in this assumption??

[RockMumbles]

why does the terminal server setup screens ask you to specify the ip range of those computers that will be booting form it

that would be the range of addresses used by the dhcp server, you'll see the same sort of thing running a linux router. Yes running the terminal-server "should" set up the necessary services for you. I can get the openMosix enabled terminal-server to function flawlessly at home, but I can't get it to run at school.

-rock