You're right. It is simple. I got this going quicker than any of my other PXE systems. I just loaded Netboot-Server pet and dnsmasq. I got dnsmasq from jamesbond's Thu 03 Feb 2011, 10:20 post: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=64107 - it wasn't in the Google Docs "PXE - Netbooting using PUPPY Linux". I recommend that anyone who tries PXE should first attempt this current Netboot method using Puppy Linux as the server.
This also seems to boot faster than any other netboot I've done. I took it a step further and placed other Linux OS's in /root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ by changing the /root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default file to contain:
include menu.cfg
default vesamenu.c32
prompt 0
timeout 0
Now I have a menu to select multiple OS's. I used some files from another Linux live PXE install. The files I used are:
/root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/menu.cfg (points to stdmenu.cfg and txt.cfg)
/root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/vesamenu.c32
/root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/splash.png (background graphic)
/root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/stdmenu.cfg (fonts and colors)
/root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/syslinux.cfg
/root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/txt.cfg (this has the multiple OS choices)
txt.cfg:
label tinycore2.2
menu label tinycore2.2
kernel tinycore2.2/bzImage
append initrd=tinycore2.2/tinycore.gz
label junk511script
menu label junk511script
kernel junk511script/vmlinuz
append initrd=junk511script/initrd.gz loglevel=7 PDEV1=tmpfs
Going back to the separate 60-90 minute rom o matic gPXE http boot time issue: I also tried it on a PC with a working on-board NIC and it took exactly 90 minutes. It looks like it's the same regardless of the PC. The initrd.gz is 177 MB.
Beyond PXE, cloud PXE --- SOLVED
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gcmartin
Glad to see its helped you.c7jaff wrote:I recommend that anyone who tries PXE should first attempt this current Netboot method using Puppy Linux as the server.
This also seems to boot faster than any other netboot I've done. I took it a step further and placed other Linux OS's ... .
You may have noticed that there is a section of that document that guides in setup for a multi-boot selection automaitically for you as well. That section should reduce all manual efforts to have a LAN PC select which distro you want to boot.
Finally, there is some polishing that has been discussed about advancing this for LAN administrators who run Puppy that want to have PCs on the LAN boot particular distros and to do session saves. There are various approaches that have been tossed around without any clear winner just
Hope tthis additional information helps you meet your requirements
P.S. Thanks for the web-page reference error information you provided