Multiple PXE Boot Images
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Fog Users,
I am new to Fog and have setup a server (ubuntu 10.04) and have the basic functionality working properly. I am very excited to continue to explore the features Fog has to offer.
However, I do have a question regarding PXE booting. The vast majority of our clients will benefit from the centralized management capabilities available with Fog. We have approximately 700 clients in our environment. Approximately 60 of these clients have outdated hardware and will be used as thin clients (we have been experimenting with ThinStation).
In an ideal world, I would like the old systems to PXE boot a ThinStation image and act as a thin client instead of booting to the typical Fog menu. Is it possible to assign different PXE boot images to the old clients without interrupting the typical Fog functionality? Is it possible to differentiate different PXE boot images based on the client MAC address or IP address? Our DHCP server is an win 2008 box using reservations with options 66 & 67 pointing to the Fog server. Clients are booting to Fog without any problems.
I have spent a great deal of time searching and may be running into road blocks as a result of improper terminology. If at all possible I would like to avoid setting up and additional PXE server and VLAN’ing, etc. I would like to keep things as simple as possible if a reasonable solution exists.
I greatly appreciate any advice or input your experience and expertise can provide. Thank you,
Kevin
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might be able to do it with your DHCP server.
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I would use the DNSmasq service (works as a temp dhcp server during PXE boot ONLY) and I would adjust the menu so that there is are options to boot to various PXE servers you have access to.
Something else to look into would be an ip Helper, but I’ve only used them to get PXE into buildings that don’t have a PXE server on site. I don’t know that this would do what you want it to, but it wouldn’t hurt to look into it.
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It has been a few weeks since I made the original post (time flies when new projects are added). The above posts pointed me to a viable solution (although I wouldn’t consider it ideal) by manually adjusting options 066 & 067 in our 2008 server handling DHCP for the clients booting to the LTSP server. By default our DHCP server points clients to the Fog server. The DHCP settings for the LTSP clients have been manually added to point to the LTSP server.
I would have preferred a better level of automation, but for the time this solution works. Thank you to Vincent & Jaymes for taking the time to help.