Debian-Installer: Boot via PXE

Many recent PCI network cards or BIOSes for i386 computers support the PXE booting method. You can use this to install Debian over the network without cdrom or floppy. This comes handy if you have to install lots of computers or don't want to rewrite a cdrom or floppy for each DebianInstaller release or daily build.

The Debian installation manual documents how to set up a PXE boot server for the DebianInstaller: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch04s05.html

Using Serial Console

The Lenny installer in netboot.tar.gz does NOT support installing using serial console by default now. More information on this issue, and a patch to enable serial console access, can be found in 309223.