Puppy as a PXE server

[peterw]

Does anyone know where mknetboot.sh is or what it contained?

To explain. I came across this document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bkM ... edit?hl=en which explained how to set up Puppy as a PXE server. I thought how interesting. I wanted to see if it still would work on more modern Puppies. To do it you need two bits of software dnsmasq and mknetboot.sh. Tried it on Bionic 64 USB that I had and the package manager had dnsmasq but the link to get the mknetboot.sh doesn't work as it goes back to the old forum and nothing there.

[Clarity]

Hi @peterw: That document is done on a FATDOG v5 distro.

If you post this (or ask the moderators to move this post) to the FATDOG area of this forum[/b], expect setup instructions for the latest FATDOG (aka FD). The latest FD should be even easier-simpler to do the same setup as everything is currently built-in I would think.

In essence, using FD, you have a desktop system that will also provide PXE services for PCs on the LAN to boot from. This is all done in the background of FD and does NOT take any CPU power as it is dorment for most of the time only awakening for a few moments to service any LAN PCs who want to boot. It is an excellent implementation for any PC as the LAN PC(s) only need to tell the BIOS/UEFI to boot from the LAN adapter versus media on the PC.

Enjoy

[peterw]

Thanks. Will give Fatdog a go and report back.

[user1111]

It's a neat fallback boot option, varies according to systems but F8 or whatever as the PC boots to bring up the boot choices, select network boot and providing a PXE server on the LAN is serving images you can boot a system even though it may have no usb or cd/dvd or hdd.

Can be slow to boot, I have a <10MB vmlinuz/system that boots to cli that support network connecting ... which can be used to d/l a larger image more quickly and then kexec (or overlay) that - which tends to be quicker than booting a large image directly through PXE.

[rockedge]

these are interesting links to information on Puppy and PXE booting
https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=63718
https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=64107

or use pSearch -> https://psearch.puppylinux.com/ and then the search term "mknetboot.sh"

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