Phate Posted September 8, 2003 Report Share Posted September 8, 2003 I'm having problems configuring a PXE server on NT server 4.0 sp6.0, well as far as I can tell I have configured the server and created a virtual floppy but rebooting the bt wsorkstation to bring down a specific image, nothing happens. I'm obviously doing something wrong but i can't see it. I've searched the internet for any guides. But nothing seems to help.Can anyone out there help please..Phate :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Smith Posted September 9, 2003 Report Share Posted September 9, 2003 Phate, I have to admit to knowing absolutely nothing about PXE, but if it's anything like Powerquest Deploycentre, you need to specify the network card, a machine name and an ip address for the machine you will be deploying the image to, when you create the boot disc. Do you have to do anything like this for PXE?Perhaps you could tell us some more about what actually happens. Does the machine boot to a command prompt from the disc? If so, does it load your network card drivers and allow you to connect to the network?I know this won't sound like good news, but we found Deploycentre to be a bit flaky, so we ended up creating our own boot discs, to load the dos NIC drivers, autoconnect to the network using DHCP and then simply run a batch file, which called up Drive Image with a script to automate the Image process. It may be that you will need to look at the possibility of doing this.Regards. Mr. Mouse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phate Posted September 10, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 10, 2003 :blush: Mr. Mouse,As described in your last message thats exactly what we have, I am using Powerquest Deploycentre, we have specified the network cards as well as the machine name along with a MAC address, we have created and assigned a virtual floppy as well. But get we get no response from the client PC, such as when we reboot, we don't recieve any messages, it just reboots and goes back to the login screen. I was expecting some sort of message or even an error message would be nice, just to get some sort of idea where I am going wrong.We do currently create our own boot disks to restore a specific image from our image server onto a workstation, so probably what I will try is as you mentioned creating our own the virtual disks based on our exisiting boot disks that we do know work.You see what I'm trying find whether we could use the PXE server in our rollout without the need to go to every pc with a boot disk. Anyway, I'll go away and try out out boot disks, if you can think of anything else I would really appreciate it.Many Thanks in advance mr mousePhate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spikeychris Posted September 10, 2003 Report Share Posted September 10, 2003 Like Mr M I have little experience with PXE servers. I use other tools, have you tried Rbfg.exe?The link here might help How the Remote Installation Boot Disk WorksThe only thing I do know (I think) is the Boot Agent (bootROM) isBIOS-integrated so the first boot would have to be LAN. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spikeychris Posted September 10, 2003 Report Share Posted September 10, 2003 Windows 2000 Pro deployment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spikeychris Posted September 10, 2003 Report Share Posted September 10, 2003 Couple more linkshttp://www.ltsp.org/documentation/pxe.howto.htmlhttp://www.kegel.com/linux/pxe.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Smith Posted September 10, 2003 Report Share Posted September 10, 2003 But get we get no response from the client PC, such as when we reboot, we don't receive any messages, it just reboots and goes back to the login screen. I was expecting some sort of message or even an error message would be nice, just to get some sort of idea where I am going wrong.I hope I am not missing the point here, but I assume that by "virtual floppy", you mean you are trying to get the machines to boot straight from the network, which they are failing to do. If this is the case (please don't get upset with the following suggestion), have you ensured that Deploycentre is enabled in full broadcast mode, and that the machines have been set in the bios to enable network booting?This is one area we had major problems with, as you must realise, having a server transmit broadcast packets, tends to have dire effects on the performance of your network, and ideally needs to be done when there is very little other data flying around (ie. at night!).The other question I would have for you, is that you are specifying the mac address. Is this the actual mac address of the card you are trying to reach? Or , and again forgive this question, are you putting in a fictitious one? It will need to be the correct address to have any chance of working. I should also point out, that we have never tried using mac addresses for our rollouts.The other bad news I have for you, is that when we have had success with a deploy of this nature, it has taken over 10 hours to do 20 machines at once. Bearing in mind that with a pack of 10 selfmade boot discs, we can start the machines manually and complete the job on the same 20 machines in less than an hour.Finally, if you haven't already done so, I would suggest reading through the links posted by spikeychris. There is a lot of good information there, and you may pick up some ideas.Regards. Mr. M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Smith Posted September 11, 2003 Report Share Posted September 11, 2003 Phate, I got one of the lads in the office to have another look at this today.I think I managed to miss a bit before, but it looks like you also HAVE to have a TFTP server running, and the NIC's do need to support network booting. We have various NIC's, but the majority are D-Link. These would need to have a boot rom fitted to the cards to work. We have had some joy with Intel Pro NIC's, but only to the point of getting them to boot and talk to the server. They don't seem to want to do much more. :( Hope this extra info helps. Mr. M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Smith Posted September 11, 2003 Report Share Posted September 11, 2003 Phate, I have to admit to knowing absolutely nothing about PXEDohhhh!!!! :blush: :blush: just found out what PXE actually stands for!!Preboot eXecution EnvironmentMr. M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phate Posted September 12, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 Thanks Mr Mouse, its could be helpful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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