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How to set up a Mac as a PXE boot server, with Debian Live
Authored by: sr105 on Jun 28, '13 12:57:51PM

It's a good idea to use something other than 192.168.x.x for your network. Those IPs are used by lots of routers, VMWare, Parallels, etc. Use 10.x.y.z as an alternative with a unique number for 'x'. Make sure your network and network masks match between bootp and Network Preferences. If they don't match, e.g. 10.1.1.x/16 vs 10.1.1.x/24, bootp will silently refuse to answer.

Set the bootp flag to detect other dhcp servers as well.

I use this for testing hardware and always change the paths for tftpboot and debian-live to be inside my home directory.

Last, if you're only testing with one machine, you don't need a hub/switch. Just connect a cable direct from your mac to the device.



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How to set up a Mac as a PXE boot server, with Debian Live
Authored by: lullabud on Jun 30, '13 04:07:39PM
It's a good idea to use something other than 192.168.x.x for your network. Those IPs are used by lots of routers, VMWare, Parallels, etc. Use 10.x.y.z as an alternative with a unique number for 'x'. Make sure your network and network masks match between bootp and Network Preferences. If they don't match, e.g. 10.1.1.x/16 vs 10.1.1.x/24, bootp will silently refuse to answer.
Not necessarily true, at least for a home network. 192.168.x.0/24 is great for home networks precisely because it is not (sanely) used in enterprise, and thus there are no route collisions when connecting to VPNs.

Also, in the case that you do want to connect to other 10/8 networks and participate within that IP space, you shouldn't randomly select one because once again you may have routing problems.

But hey, 10/8 networks are really easy to type, especially if you use 10.0.0.x, because you can type those like 10.x and they'll still work with most CLI tools and browsers and stuff.

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How to set up a Mac as a PXE boot server, with Debian Live
Authored by: edxley on Jul 04, '13 01:40:17PM
Yes, match the address and mask between Network Preferences and the bootpd plist file, and also the exports file if you are using NFS.  The exports file would look something like this:
/srv/debian-live -ro -network 10.1.1.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
Also, for Debian Live, edit the address in the nfsroot= parameter in the live.cfg file.  Change the 192.168.1.1 to the 10.1.1.x address that you are using, so the whole parameter is something like nfsroot=10.1.1.1:/srv/debian-live.  (For the alternate setup, edit the fetch= parameter in live.cfg, to something like fetch=tftp://10.1.1.1/filesystem.squashfs.)

Should be doable even with other than 192.168.x.x!

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