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I would like to PXE boot a laptop to install Debian on it.

Normally, I would use a CAT5 cable to connect the laptop to my router as I can't boot from network via Wi-Fi. My router running Tomato would assign the IP address and then point to a VM on my laptop as the next_server, and the VM would serve everything needed to get the OS installed, push configuration via Ansible, etc.

This time, I don't have my router. There is a Wi-Fi network here that I don't control, and the ISP router likely has no configuration to set up any next_server.

When booting the laptop, I was considering connecting it directly to my laptop via a CAT5 cable. (I'm assuming both Ethernet ports support autosensing so I won't need to resort to using a crossover cable.)

I don't want to install a ton of software on my laptop to get this going, but I can settle for some simple packages if needed.

Ultimately, I want this laptop to boot over the network, find the VM on my laptop, and start booting--all without having to reconfigure anything on the ISP router.

The VM runs in Oracle VirtualBox and is currently configured with two network adapters for some reason. I'm flexible on changing these VM settings for this if necessary.

The first adapter is Attached to Bridged Adpater, with Name wlan0.

The second adapter is Attached to Host-only Adapter, with Name vboxnet0.

EDIT: To answer some of the comments and clarify my setup, there are no Windows computers involved.

There is an ISP-provided Wi-Fi router here that I can't control; it has DHCP enabled so wireless devices and laptops get NAT IP addresses, but no next-server value for network booting.

The wireless router is also not suitable for additional Ethernet connections, so I can't plug the new laptop directly into its Ethernet port.

Both laptops have wireless NICs and connect to the wireless router for Internet access. The laptops also have an Ethernet port that rarely gets used.

The second laptop has no OS; the drive is wiped and ready to install an OS.

My physical laptop runs Debian.

My laptop has a Debian VM running in Virtual Box that I use to serve network boot clients. This VM currently assumes the Tomato router will provide DHCP as well as a next-server value pointing to the VM.

The Tomato router is no longer in the mix, only the wireless router mentioned above, which is causing me my current grief.

The VM provides PXE booting so boot clients can boot into System Rescue CD, TRK, Debian installers, Debian live CD, etc.

I typically boot a Debian installer over PXE, and then point to the same VM for Debian preseed configuration as the VM is also running an HTTP server to serve the preseed files.

If I can get to the preseed configuration by booting from a burned CD installer or USB, then I consider this a viable workaround for my situation. More than likely I need to burn a CD, but it would have to be an actual 650 MB or less CD as there are no DVDs around here.

Once the base installation is complete, I run Ansible commands from my physical laptop to push configuration changes to the newly-provisioned hardware.

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  • Why not just use USB stick - will be faster by making it bootable to the Debian setup image?
    – TomEus
    Nov 21, 2017 at 5:18
  • Do you want to PXE Boot a laptop or a VM ? How many physical computers are involved in this ?
    – davidgo
    Nov 21, 2017 at 5:51
  • You should explicitly say you're using Windows although based on your setup I'm pretty sure you are.
    – jdwolf
    Nov 21, 2017 at 7:51
  • Thanks for poking at this. I updated above hopefully clarifying these questions.
    – jia103
    Nov 21, 2017 at 19:05
  • It appears the simplest solution was the USB stick/CD. @TomEus - If you want to provide this as an answer, I can accept it. I booted with a bootable USB, pressed Tab at the initial menu, removed the "--- quiet" and replaced with "auto=true priority=critical url=192.168.x.y --" and pressed Enter, where 192.168.x.y is the IP address of my HTTP server serving the preseed configuration files.
    – jia103
    Nov 22, 2017 at 2:38

3 Answers 3

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The easiest way is to create a bootable USB stick from the Debian ISO that you already have and connect to the other laptop via manual IP config

2

The selected answer imply creating the USB drive; a real pain. You can set up a PXE Server and start installing Debian in 15 minutes, w/o touching your already in place DHCP server. See here: https://www.vercot.com/~serva/an/WindowsPXE1.html

for Debian specifically see here http://vercot.com/~serva/an/NonWindowsPXE3.html

(I'm related to Serva development)

0

You can use bootp or DHCP protocols to do this. You don't strictly need a router but you do need something to provide those protocols.

Almost any network card auto senses. Its something of a modern myth that you ever need one.

What you want to use is a bridged adapter set it to your ethernet network and connect your laptop up directly. You can also use host-only adaptor and then within Windows bridge its interface with another adaptor.

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