April 2012
I needed SLES11 SP1 on an ESX VM, but it wouldn't install from DVD image. The image loaded allright, but the machine hung while booting the kernel. So I installed from my Debian DHCP/PXE server:
Download the SLES11SP1 DVD (or get it from a colleague).
Copy the DVD contents to a webserver.
sudo mount -oloop,ro SLES11SP2_64bit.iso /mnt/iso/
sudo cp -rp /mnt/iso /srv/www/pub/misc/sles11
In e.g. /srv/www/boot/sles11sp2install.txt
:
#!gpxe ifopen net0 dhcp net0 imgfree echo "Fetching the kernel:" kernel http://www.domain.com/pub/misc/sles11/boot/x86_64/loader/linux echo "Fetching the initial RAMdisk:" initrd http://www.domain.com/pub/misc/sles11/boot/x86_64/loader/initrd imgargs linux initrd=initrd append vga=0x314 showopts install=http://www.domain.com/pub/misc/sles11/ echo "Here we go:" boot linux echo "Pxe booting cancelled, using local disk instead.."
... with this config:
group sles11sp2-install { if exists user-class and option user-class = "gPXE" { # This is when gPXE is already loaded filename "http://www.domain.com/boot/sles11sp2install.txt"; } else { # This is the first step: the PXE bootROM loads the gPXE bootstrap next-server 192.168.63.171; filename "/tftpboot/undionly.kpxe"; } host vm02 { # Virtual ESX hardware ethernet 00:50:56:89:00:d0 ; fixed-address 192.168.63.79 ; } } # end group sles11sp2-install