How does each PXE boot client know to grab the image from Clonezilla server?

Question

I am kind of used to Fog and trying out Clonezilla for a change. For Fog, all of our clients are on PXE boot all of the time.

I noticed there is not much instruction on Clonezilla server through PXE boot. So, how does a client know that is the image for them?

Say I have a room with 40 desktops and all 40 PXE boot. However, only 30 needs to be imaged. It seems that the only way Clonezilla knows to upload an image to a client is just setting a client to PXE boot and no other way of selecting an option. Is that how Clonezilla server works? Any computer that is PXE booting it will just send the image?

Answer 1

I believe that part of the client PXE boot is to locate a bootable file with all or part of the MAC address as the filename (HEX to test) when it loads from the designated source system.

Thus if you MAC address was AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF then a bootfile names AABBCCDDEEFF would be located on the server. Failing that it would then try filename AABBCCDDEE, failing that it would then try AABBCCDD, failing that AABBCC, failing that AABB, and finally failing that try AA. At least this is how the PXE BIOS boot works on a Dell system.

ON the server side, it is possible to alias one or more of these boot files to the same thing using symbolic links (which is commonly done).