System information

42 Deploying Samba on IBM Eserver BladeCenter
Figure 3-9 FTP setup window
8. Type in the IP address of the FTP server and directory path to RedHat relative to /var/ftp.
9. Follow the CD installation process from step 3 on page 30.
3.4 PXE Boot installation
PXE stands for Pre eXecution Environment. This is a special function of modern network
adaptors that allows execution of special pieces of code during the boot process. This is
usually used to access files on other servers for booting itself; for example, you can download
the Linux kernel from another server into memory and then boot this kernel.
This enables computers to boot without the need of any local disk. We will use this process to
start the installation process without the need for diskettes and CD’s. Once the blade server
starts the installation process, it will be similar to the Network installation in the previous
section.
3.4.1 Configuration of the PXE Boot server
We will use a boot server that contains the installation media and the necessary network
services for the remote installation. The boot server will be an eServer BladeCenter HS20
server installed using the CD installation process.
1. First, complete the server setup steps for an NFS install server detailed in in 3.3, “Network
installation” on page 36. In short, make sure you have a local copy of the Red Hat
installation files and that these files are accessible using NFS. See section 3.3.1, “Setting
up the NFS install server” on page 36 for details. Also make sure that the boot server has
a static IP address.
2. Download or copy the DHCP server from the Red Hat CDs (the full name is
dhcp-2.0pl5-8.i386.rpm).
Note: If the server cannot be reached and DHCP has been used for the client
configuration, choose Back and type in the TPC/IP info. Then try again from the server.