7.3. Support for PXE First

Rocks supports a network device first (or PXE first) BIOS-defined boot order. It is now recommended that a network boot (known as PXE) come before local hard disk. In particular the boot order in BIOS should be set as

  
1. CDROM
2. On-board Network Device (PXE)
3. Hard Disk

The default PXE "action" is to simply pass to the next device down on the BIOS boot list. In the usual case, this is to the local hard disk. Most of the time decision to boot or reinstall is still left to the local node and the frontend does not need to know which state the node desires. If booting into re-installation (e.g. the node either did not shut down properly, or /boot/kickstart/cluster-kickstart was called locally) that will proceed as expected. However, it is possible to change this action on a per-node basis.