Set up Debian PXE boot server

I have always wanted to set up a Debian PXE (Pre-eXecution Environment) server, so I could have machines boot from the network and select an OS to install. Ultimately I expect to be able to do this with any OS, but at first I will have it boot various versions of Debian, from my local partial Debian mirror (maintained with debmirror).

this Debian Administration guide

The first thing it has me install is tftpd-hpa, which is easy enough:
```
aptitude install tftpd-hpa
```
This automatically started the tftpd-hpa daemon. The guide suggested I need to edit /etc/default/tftpd-hpa:
```
# /etc/default/tftpd-hpa
TFTP_USERNAME="tftp"
TFTP_DIRECTORY="/srv/tftp"
TFTP_ADDRESS="0.0.0.0:69"
TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure"
```
The above are the defaults, and since those looked alright to me, I didn’t modify them. The directory /srv/tftp already existed on my system (probably from an earlier attempt at setting up PXE boot), and was empty.
Next, I needed to set up my DHCP server. This is provided by my custom-built router/firewall, running pfSense. Many home routers don’t allow one to set DHCP options, but pfSense ain’t no ordinairy router. (-; I added my worksation/tftp server’s IP address (hostname did NOT work), put “pxelinux.0” as the filename, and that seemed to be it.

The next step was to configure the PXE boot. I copied the pxelinux files, and debian-installer directory from my local debmirror:


cp -R /var/spool/mirror/dists/sid/main/installer-amd64/current/images/pxelinux.* /srv/tftp/
cp -R /var/spool/mirror/dists/sid/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/debian-installer /srv/tftp/

The final step was to test it. Once I configured my VirtualBox test machine, it booted into PXE, saw my server/workstation, and it is now installing Debian Sid!

Where to go from here?

Figure out the best way to list multiple Linux distributions
Figure out a way to have this boot Windows images

Neither of the above look trivial.