4. Install syslinux and configure pxelinux

For PXE to work we need to have a network boot loader program. We’re going to use the PXELINUX bootloader, which is part of SYSLINUX. You can install it via dnf on Rocky Linux.

[root@master ~]# dnf install syslinux syslinux-tftpboot

We’ll need a few specific files from that installation. To find out where they are located, use the rpm command to display all files that have been installed by that particular package.

[root@master ~]# rpm -ql syslinux-tftpboot
/tftpboot
...
/tftpboot/menu.c32
...
/tftpboot/pxelinux.0

Copy pxelinux.0, menu.c32, ldlinux.c32 and libutil.c32 into /var/lib/tftpboot.

To see if TFTP is working, go to your home directory and try to download pxelinux.0 using tftp.

[root@master ~]# cd
[root@master ~]# tftp localhost
tftp> get pxelinux.0
tftp> quit
# verify that pxelinux.0 was downloaded into your current directory

Next create the PXELINUX configuration folder:

[root@master ~]# mkdir -p /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

Finally, create a default configuration file under /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

DEFAULT menu
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE ORCA 2026 - Default
TIMEOUT 200
TOTALTIMEOUT 6000
ONTIMEOUT local

LABEL local
        MENU LABEL (local)
        MENU DEFAULT
        LOCALBOOT -1

When PXELINUX launches it will look for configuration files with a specific name in the following order

  1. 01-MAC-address (01-DE-AD-BE-EF-09-39)

  2. Full 32 bits of the IP address (C0A81101)

  3. Most significant bytes of IP address (C0A811, C0A8, C0) to capture ranges

  4. default

Try this by creating a customized Boot Menu for c01. You can use the gethostip command to determine the 32bit hexadecimal of an IP address:

[root@master ~]# gethostip c01.hpc
c01.hpc 192.168.17.1 C0A81101

Create a file in /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ using one of the above mentioned methods. E.g., /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/C0A81101.

DEFAULT menu
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE ORCA 2026 - c01
TIMEOUT 200
TOTALTIMEOUT 6000
ONTIMEOUT local

LABEL local
        MENU LABEL (local)
        MENU DEFAULT
        LOCALBOOT -1

Power on the c01 system via IPMI and observe the boot process via the IPMI Serial Console. Verify the correct Boot Menu is shown.

[root@master ~]# ipmiwrap c01 power on
[root@master ~]# ipmiwrap c01 sol activate
pxelinux_c01

PXELINUX boot screen for c01