Installing Debian using network booting

Preface

Installation using network booting must not be confused with DebianNetworkInstall. In network install, you start with a CD to install a minimal Linux system before you proceed to download further packages over the network. Here, you need no CD at all. You instruct you BIOS boot menu to boot directly from the network.

To do so, you need a network boot server. As there are no fiducial boot servers out in the wild, you need to setup your own. This is considerably more complicated than installing Debian from CD. Normally, network booting is only used if there is really no way to boot from CD.

In the Web, several articles can be found that describe in more or less detail how to setup a network boot server. They all have the same weakness: You are required to execute a long list of instructions without getting any feedback before the very end of the procedure when you try to boot. If it works, fine. If not, debugging will become very very difficult. Therefore in the following we break down the procedure into steps that can be debugged separately.

Preconditions

The computer you want to install to will be called the Client.

The computer you install from will be called the Server. We assume that the Server is running Debian.

To be specific, we assume that the Client and the Server are part of a LAN with the following IP addresses:

You will find out the value of x later.

The following instructions have been tested with Debian 6.0 (squeeze) in January 2012.

Change boot menu

Setup the BIOS boot menu of the Client to boot from the network.

Set up DHCP server

On the already installed computer, set up a DHCP server. Used configuration:

 allow bootp;
 allow booting;

 option domain-name "installation.local";
 option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;

 subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
   range 10.0.0.100 10.0.0.150;
   option broadcast-address 10.0.0.255;
 }

 host kreon {
   hardware ethernet 00:18:f3:90:14:51;
   filename "pxelinux.0";
}

This must adapted to your needs, especially the MAC address. kreon is the hostname of the new computer.

Install TFTP

On the already installed computer, set up a tftp server. Use the tftpd-hpa and not the atftp (the later did not work for me): apt-get install tftpd-hpa.

In the tftp directory create a directory named pxelinux.cfg and create a default file there:

mkdir /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
printf "label linuxboot\n\tKERNEL pxeboot\n" >/var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

Configure BIOS

On the new to install computer, enter BIOS setup and chose network boot (PXE boot) - sometimes before it is possible to chose network booting only if also some boot rom is enabled.

Compile Kernel

Grab a kernel from ftp://ftp.kernel.org, unpack and configure it for the new computer, compile it. (Note: Do not use modules.) Be sure to add all the device drivers needed for installation. Especially the CD-/DVD-Rom and harddisk interface driver are needed.

After compiling copy the kernel image to the tftp server directory /var/lib/tftpboot. Name it pxeboot.

Install pxelinux.0

Do a

apt-get install syslinux 
cp /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /var/lib/tftpboot

Install initrd.gz

Mount the CD, copy over the initrd.gz to /var/lib/tftpboot.

Status

The tftp dir should now looks like:

/var/lib/tftpboot/
/var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0
/var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
/var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
/var/lib/tftpboot/pxeboot
/var/lib/tftpboot/initrd.gz

Boot

Put the CD in the new computer. Boot the new computer via network. It should get the IP address from the DHCP server and also the pxelinux.0 file from the tftp server. The bootloader prints some lines concering some non existing files which can be ignored and than displays a boot prompt. On the command line enter:

pxeboot initrd=initrd.gz

Install Debian

At this point, all the drivers that are needed to install Debian on the new system are available and the normal installtion procedure can be used to install the whole Debian system to the new computer.