I set up a little menu system within the pxelinux system.
That has worked well for few years but I'm now experimenting with ipxe as a
replacement. Better scripting and an active developer community.
On Mar 28, 2014 4:35 PM, "Paul Heinlein" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Up front, I'll admit this question is a bit of a shot in the dark, but it
> never hurts to ask, right?
>
> I've got PXE/TFTP setup for various Linux distributions and some utilities
> (clonezilla, dban, etc). I'm now starting in on OpenBSD.
>
> As far as I've been able to figure out via internet searches, pxelinux
> (from the syslinux package) is unable to pass control of a machine directly
> to a BSD kernel. Instead, you have to use the BSD-supplied 'pxeboot'
> loader. The naming conventions enforced by pxelinux mean that pxeboot must
> be called pxeboot.0.
>
> Here's a simplified view of my tftpboot directory:
>
>   etc/
>   `-- boot.conf
>   images/openbsd/
>   `-- 5.4
>       |-- amd64
>       |   |-- bsd
>       |   `-- pxeboot.0
>       `-- i386
>           |-- bsd
>           `-- pxeboot.0
>
> And here's a relevent snippet of my PXE menu file:
>
>   LABEL openbsd-5.4.amd64
>     MENU LABEL OpenBSD 5.4 amd64
>     KERNEL images/openbsd/5.4/amd64/pxeboot.0
>
> So far so good. If I boot the image listed above, I get the BSD boot
> loader -- but, and this is the crux of my question, afaict I have to type
> the location of the actual kernel manually:
>
> boot> boot images/openbsd/5.4/amd64/bsd
>
> After I type that, the OpenBSD installation kernel boots without a hitch.
> But manually typing the kernel path is prone to error, and it's not
> scriptable.
>
> It appears that you can have one (and only one!) boot.conf file from which
> pxeboot can get some directions. Since I want to be able to serve up at
> least two different images (32- and 64-bits), I can't specify a kernel in
> boot.conf. The best I can do is print a banner, e.g.,
>
> echo **********************************************************
> echo The OpenBSD pxeboot utility cannot be passed an alterative
> echo kernel path. So you'll have to issue one of the following
> echo commands manually from the boot> prompt:
> echo
> echo boot images/openbsd/5.4/amd64/bsd
> echo boot images/openbsd/5.4/i386/bsd
> echo **********************************************************
>
> My question: Does anyone else know a better way? Can I pass an alternative
> kernel path to pxeboot? Or is there a way to specify an alternate boot.conf
> file?
>
> --
> Paul Heinlein
> [email protected]
> 45°38' N, 122°6' W
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>
>
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