PXE Boot

http://linux-sxs.org/internet_serving/pxeboot.html



http://www.ultimatedeployment.org

Ultimate Deployment Appliance
Welcome to the Ultimate Deployment Appliance Homepage.

What is the Ultimate Deployment Appliance?
Unattended OS installations (Windows, Linux, ESX, Solaris) over the network set-up in minutes!
Publish your favorite recovery/system maintenance tools over the network!
PXE Booting, Remote Installation Services, Kickstart, Jumpstart, Autoyast in a box!

When would you use this?
When you are trying to install a system that doesn't have a CDROM drive, but does have a network card (these days ultra-thin laptops and such don't have an optical drive)
When you have to install an operating system on different pieces of hardware.
When you have to install systems and want things to go automated and reproducible.
When you go to your friends house to fix his/her computer you want to be prepared. Instead of removing all that unwanted stuff you might as well start fresh. Bring your own system (laptop?), hook it up to the messed up system with a cross-cable and start re-install the system from scratch fully unattended. Head for the fridge...
When you need to do maintenance on your system without the need to carry around a stack of live CD's.
When you want to do this without paying lots of money for commercial products.

How Does it work?
Unattended Install The appliance mounts an iso file with a distribution of you favorite operating system and imports the necessary (network) boot-files. It creates a default configuration file for your automated installation and starts hosting the operating system distribution files for network booting.
System Tool Publishing Live CD's and other tools are imported entirely to the Ultimate Deployment appliance and are published for booting over the network trough PXE.