Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: > In the case of two of the three laptops I have here to play with, it's > simply a matter of telling it to boot off the DVD drive and then inserting > the appropriate disc and going on from there. In the case of this other one, > things get a little weird. > > On powerup I see messages referring to PXE, which if I remember correctly > involves booting off a network connection? There's "Media test failure, > check cable" followed by "Exiting PXE ROM" and then I get "No bootable device > -- insert boot disk and press any key. > > The thing is, this machine doesn't have a DVD drive. What it does have is a > couple of USB ports (two different color connectors so I assume different > speeds?). I am also assuming that simply putting an iso file on to a USB > stick won't quite do it. No idea about how to implement anything to do with > PXE, though I can probably safely assume that I have what I need on the LAN > here. > > Any thoughts on how best to deal with this?
If the machine can boot from USB, then, yes, writing the ISO to a USB stick is all you need to do. If not: PXE booting requires three things: - A dhcp server that answers the laptop's initial request for an IP address with the additional options that point at a TFTP server (isc-dhcp-server or kea, tftpd-hpa) - a TFTP server serving a PXE boot menu that is configured to point at a local web server - the Debian install images on the local web server If you are comfortable setting up each of those things -- there are extensive guides -- PXE booting-and-install is almost magical. If you need to do it often, I highly recommend it. But try the USB stick first. -dsr-
