Create CD-ROM image to install RHEL/UEFI

[kermit]

Greetings!
I've been searching around trying to find someone with a use case like mine, but I've not seen much out there. Hopefully what I'm trying to do is actually possible...

I would like to create a CD-ROM that boots, grabs a DHCP address, chain loads a menu from an http server, and based on the menu selection, begins installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux such that it will boot on hardware in UEFI mode.

Is such a thing possible when booting off of CD-ROM? Because of network complexities, I can't stand up a TFTP server, which is why I'm trying to do this via http. What's hanging me up is where I try to build a CD-ROM image...I don't know if I can boot the system in the standard iPXE environment and load straight into the linuxefi and initrdefi kernel and initial ram disk, or whether I have to boot into something like a shim on the iPXE image, and if so, how to even create such a thing?

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated!!

-Kermit Short

[kermit]

(2019-07-15 17:38)kermit Wrote:  Greetings!
I've been searching around trying to find someone with a use case like mine, but I've not seen much out there. Hopefully what I'm trying to do is actually possible...

I would like to create a CD-ROM that boots, grabs a DHCP address, chain loads a menu from an http server, and based on the menu selection, begins installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux such that it will boot on hardware in UEFI mode.

Is such a thing possible when booting off of CD-ROM? Because of network complexities, I can't stand up a TFTP server, which is why I'm trying to do this via http. What's hanging me up is where I try to build a CD-ROM image...I don't know if I can boot the system in the standard iPXE environment and load straight into the linuxefi and initrdefi kernel and initial ram disk, or whether I have to boot into something like a shim on the iPXE image, and if so, how to even create such a thing?

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated!!

-Kermit Short

OK I've finally found some stuff that may prove helpful. I think I can create an ipxe.efi file with an embedded script that calls my install menu.

My question now is, how do I load this efi file? Do I need to boot off of an ipxe.iso image that does something like:
chain http://web.srv/ipxe.efi

???

Or is there some way to give a make target that creates a bootable iso that loads the efi file and it's embedded script?

Thanks for your help!