Netboot non mac Client

Question

Hello,
I had search to boot my windows clients (with linux image) from my osx server.
But it doesn't work...
Someone have had an similar experience wich it work ?

Answer 1

It certainly isn't possible with "Netboot" - as in the ServerAdmin GUI or the applications that deal with it strictly (ie, Sys Image Util).
Non-Mac systems don't use Openfirmware or EFI, which has certain Netboot modules or packages to aid in netbooting a Macintosh computer.
What you need is to setup a DHCP server somehow (presumably, not with ServerAdmin). You'll need to map a static address to the client's MAC address, and setup the DHCP option to pass a "filename" parameter to the client.
You will have to use PXELinux (http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php), which is basically an image file that your PXE complaint "non-mac" system will use when it boots up into the Network Boot ROM.
You can use TFTPServer (http://ww2.unime.it/flr/tftpserver/) to help setup the TFTP part of Netbooting, which PXE uses to grab the PXE image that you define with the DHCP filename option.
PXELinux itself will fetch a configuration file, which ultimately leads to more file images that basically boot Linux up eventually.
PXELinux has some good information on it's homepage.
This page (http://linux-sxs.org/internet_serving/pxeboot.html) also has some good pointers- but beware. They are for a Fedora Linux system (the Netboot server itself is running Linux), so most of it won't apply to MOSX (ie, /etc/dhcpd.conf isn't present- I don't know where MOSX keeps it's DHCP settings for the DHCP Server). The PXE Setup and DHCP setup is pretty much the same if you can figure it out.
Netboot is really only dependent on TFTP and DHCP. This might be how Apple does things too, I don't know. Ether way, Mac OS X Server should have everything you need already installed. Configuring it properly is up to you.
-S'Captain