Modified PXE installation

Hello,

I have a difficult task ahead and don’t quite find a solution:
I have to modify a PXE environment to boot a custom image.
In this image I somehow need to get GTK loaded and display a custom python program.
OSs are: openSUSE11.x

In other words:
I need to build a small python gtk password programm into a linux boot image which is loaded before the PXE OS installation.
If you say: WAIT, pxelinux has a password function - Yes, I know. But this environment I’m working with unfortunately has NOT.
And I can’t change that. It’s a PXE via Altiris…
So I have to do the password demand with my own python program which naturally supports gtk.

Can anyone help me put these peaces together, how I can accomplish this, anyhow… ?
How do I modify for example the initrd to load gtk somehow and execute my python prog. before starting the installation of the OS ?

This is giving me a headache :frowning:

Many thanks in advance
Jim

P.S. I don’t need help with the python program, I’m just clueless on how to implement this with initrd or whatever via PXE

You could be in for a lot of research and work. initrd is a standalone root filesystem that sets things up before mounting any filesystems. It’s very limited and often only contains a limited shell such as busybox. Essentially you would have to build and put a copy of every single dynamic library and other dependencies needed by python and gtk into that filesystem. Oh, and you’ll probably need some kind of GUI environment too, like an X server.

You could look at how other diskless booting environments like Kiwi-LTSP build their initrd. When you’ve done that, you might conclude it might be better to write a CLI or ncurses password program. Good luck.