Building an pxelinux memtest server

Building the system

Find a box

This step is real simple. Find a computer that will suffice it's use... If it's going to be just to run memtest, a thin, light system will work.

You should know this step by now, but if not it's just fine.

Set the NIC of the server you are working on to boot from the network, plug into the build intranet, when pxelinux boot, choose the install base server option. When this is finished don't forget to disable that feature. If the motherboard doesn't support this then use a boot floppy with pxeboot installed.

Install Base server

Installing the software

Our selection is of software for this project is: syslinux, dhcp3-server, tftpd-hpa, and memtest86+. You can find these packages through the apt program.

bash ~ # apt-get install dhcp3-server tftpd-hpa memtest86+ syslinux

Configuration

First the NIC

Make sure the main network interface is set up for a static IP.

bash ~ # cat /etc/network/interfaces 
# this file is blah blah blah information, see interfaces(5)
# The loopback interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
# replace ethX with your interface, see ifconfig(8)
auto ethX
iface ethX inet static 
# Set static ip like 10.0.0.10
  address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 
# And the netmask like 255.255.255.0
  netmask yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

DHCP server

Now we must set up a DHCP server.

bash ~ # cat /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf
# see dhcpd(8)
# 
default lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
log-facility local7;
# This next line is needed so so pxelinux doesn't stall when 
# selecting the configuration to use, and should be the address
# set in /etc/network/interfaces e.g. 10.0.0.10
next-server 10.0.0.10
subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { 
   # range will only offer IP addresses between these numbers e.g. 10.0.0.20 - 10.0.0.30 
   range 10.0.0.20 10.0.0.30
   option broadcast-address 10.0.0.255;
   # This line is need for pxelinux 
   filename "pxelinux.0"
}

Memtest server

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