Can't get PXE boot working on WDS + Linux DHCP server

Posted by askvictor on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by askvictor
Published on 2011-02-02T05:23:32Z Indexed on 2011/02/02 7:27 UTC
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Hi

I'm trying to get WDS to PXE boot some laptops. The university is running a (linux) DHCP server for the entire network; we can't run our own. We can (and have) set options in that DHCP server to point to a tftp server and file (pxeboot.n12 on the WDS server we run). The client seems to get the pxeboot.n12 file (judging by the server logs), but then comes back with 'TFTP download failed Pres any key to reboot'. I've tried running a third-party tftp service on the WDS server, and found that the client pulls the first stage (pxeboot.n12) correctly, but then looks for the second stage (bootmgr.exe) in the root of the tftp folder - whereas WDS places it in \boot\x86\ (or \boot\x64). Similarly, it looks for a file called BCD, which doesn't exist (rather there are a few files scattered around with the extension .bcd). I'm confused if the WDS tftp server does some magic returning certain files, or if I haven't configured it correctly.

The server is 2008 R2.

Cheers,

Victor

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