Quiz: PXE / Provisioning

← Back to quiz index

3 questions

L1 (2 questions)

1. A server won't PXE boot. What do you check?

Show answer

1. NIC set as first boot device in BIOS.
2. DHCP server responding with next-server and filename options.
3. TFTP service running and reachable.
4. Correct bootloader for UEFI vs legacy BIOS.
5. VLAN tagging on the provisioning port.

2. What is the PXE boot sequence and what services does it depend on?

Show answer

1. Server BIOS/UEFI sends DHCP discover with PXE option.
2. DHCP server responds with IP + TFTP server address (next-server) + boot filename.
3. Client downloads bootloader (pxelinux.0 or grubx64.efi) via TFTP.
4. Bootloader fetches kernel + initrd per config.
5. Kernel boots and may fetch full image via HTTP. Dependencies: DHCP, TFTP, HTTP/NFS for images. If any fails, the server gets no OS.

L2 (1 questions)

1. What changes when PXE booting in UEFI mode vs legacy BIOS mode?

Show answer

UEFI PXE uses grubx64.efi (or shimx64.efi for Secure Boot) instead of pxelinux.0. DHCP must return the correct bootloader filename per client architecture (option 93 / client-arch). UEFI uses HTTP boot as an alternative to TFTP (faster, more reliable). Config files are in grub.cfg format instead of pxelinux.cfg/. Mixing UEFI and BIOS clients requires DHCP vendor-class matching to serve different bootloaders.