The boot process with include a packet information that will tell the PXE server which bootloader to use…. The selection of the bootloader will be done automatically when the client boots. Grub bootloader approach will be used when UEFI Systems needs to be deployed. The pxelinux bootloader will be used when BIOS Based systems need to be installed. Because grub files are signed, this setup will also support UEFI and secure boot option enabled as well This combination seems the one that provides the best results when there is a need to deploy operating systems on UEFI or BIOS based systems. This guide will mix PXELinux and grub technology.
#UBUNTU TFTP SERVER GUI HOW TO#
This guide will explain how to configure your dhcp/pxe/tftp server infrastructure to support BIOS and UEFI-based systems network installation.
#UBUNTU TFTP SERVER GUI SERIES#
In this post (or series of posts), we will provide again a kind of step by step guide in order to setup a PXE Server that can serve at the same time BIOS or UEFI Based systems… It’s should be quite straight forward as most of the aspects have been already discussed in some previous posts. In some future posts (maybe), just for the challenge, we might provide guidance on how to setup a PXE Server using only PXELinux technology and/or using only grub technology. The advantage of Grub is that all the necessary files have been signed and can be used when secure boot option has been enabled. Grub solution can be used to deploy Operating systems on BIOS and UEFI based systems. On the other hand, it’s seems also possible to get rid of pxelinux technology completely and replace it with the grub technology. pxelinux on UEFI systems has slow performance issues (related to tftp block size and this seems not to be fixed yet…).pxelinux cannot be used against UEFI systems when Secure Boot option is enabled (the bootloader is not signed for UEFI secure boot support!!).However, some significant limitations exists. Technically, it’s possible to use only PXELinux solution in order to Deploy operating systems to BIOS or UEFI based systems. It seems that the standard and well accepted approach is to combine pxelinux technology for BIOS-Based systems and to use grub boot loader for UEFI-Based systems. In our previous posts (see here, here and here) ,about PXE technology and how to deploy Ubuntu machine through the network, we have seen that since the introduction of UEFI technology and secure boot, the process has changed a little bit and there is a need to combined technologies in order to be able to deploy Ubuntu operating system.