PXE with 3rd Party Drivers
Posted: 2012/04/14 00:17:35
Hi Everyone,
I have a few issues with PXE and automated builds. The manual build works just fine (thanks to the awesome ElRepo guys) and I was able to find the right drivers for my JMicron JMC250 PCI Express GB NIC per the link below:
[url=https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=29175&forum=40&post_id=120807#forumpost120807][SOLVED] Unable to Install NIC Driver - Asus Nettop EB1007 JMicron JMC250 PCI Express GB NIC[/url]
However, I was wondering how this would work with PXE. I have an existing PXE server on a CentOS 6.2 VM. Works great. According to this [url=http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PXE/PXE_Setup]Wiki Doc[/url], I only need to copy 2 files (vmlinuz and initrd.img from /images/pxeboot/ directory). I compared the 5.4 CD and DVD since thats the only version that I had with both ISOs and they seem to be exactly the same size. The only thing that really takes up a good bulk of the space is the CentOS directory where all the rpms are stored. From what I can understand, those are the only files I need to install a basic CentOS deployment through PXE.
So my question is, how do I add 3rd party drivers to my PXE server so that they are automatically installed as the CentOS installation kicks off? I googled around and some people also had issues with 3rd party drivers for their RAID cards.
How do you install the 3rd party RAID drivers first before the OS kicks off even when it is a manual install? Can I modify the ISO so that the driver can be automatically installed? I assume floppies are no longer required if it is a fairly new RAID card but not part of the supported hardware?
Can a ks.cfg file tell CentOS to install, for example, the RAID card driver (same goes for my NIC I guess) which I would assume needs a local YUM repository that will hold my drivers and additional software?
If so, even if I had the same model servers but some had onboard and some had addon RAID cards, is there anyway to auto-detect which ones it would need so I dont install unneeded drivers?
Mark
I have a few issues with PXE and automated builds. The manual build works just fine (thanks to the awesome ElRepo guys) and I was able to find the right drivers for my JMicron JMC250 PCI Express GB NIC per the link below:
[url=https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=29175&forum=40&post_id=120807#forumpost120807][SOLVED] Unable to Install NIC Driver - Asus Nettop EB1007 JMicron JMC250 PCI Express GB NIC[/url]
However, I was wondering how this would work with PXE. I have an existing PXE server on a CentOS 6.2 VM. Works great. According to this [url=http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PXE/PXE_Setup]Wiki Doc[/url], I only need to copy 2 files (vmlinuz and initrd.img from /images/pxeboot/ directory). I compared the 5.4 CD and DVD since thats the only version that I had with both ISOs and they seem to be exactly the same size. The only thing that really takes up a good bulk of the space is the CentOS directory where all the rpms are stored. From what I can understand, those are the only files I need to install a basic CentOS deployment through PXE.
So my question is, how do I add 3rd party drivers to my PXE server so that they are automatically installed as the CentOS installation kicks off? I googled around and some people also had issues with 3rd party drivers for their RAID cards.
How do you install the 3rd party RAID drivers first before the OS kicks off even when it is a manual install? Can I modify the ISO so that the driver can be automatically installed? I assume floppies are no longer required if it is a fairly new RAID card but not part of the supported hardware?
Can a ks.cfg file tell CentOS to install, for example, the RAID card driver (same goes for my NIC I guess) which I would assume needs a local YUM repository that will hold my drivers and additional software?
If so, even if I had the same model servers but some had onboard and some had addon RAID cards, is there anyway to auto-detect which ones it would need so I dont install unneeded drivers?
Mark