Using vmware player to bootstrap footprint for debugging purposes """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" You can then simply run dnsmasq on vmnet1 by using the following dnsmasq configuration (providing vmnet1 is 192.168.26.1): domain-needed bogus-priv server=/localnet/192.168.26.1 local=/localnet/ interface=vmnet1 expand-hosts domain=localnet dhcp-range=192.168.26.5,192.168.26.150,12h dhcp-host=00:50:56:0d:ba:be,footprint-vmx,192.168.26.5 dhcp-boot=/yam/rhel3as-i386/pxelinux.0,footprint.localnet,192.168.26.1 dhcp-authoritative log-queries Make sure vmnet-dhcpd is not running, since I cannot find where to disable it properly, let's kill it: killall -KILL vmnet-dhcpd Then enable it and restart dnsmasq: chkconfig dnsmasq on service dnsmasq restart Install atftp-server and restart xinetd to make it active: chkconfig tftp on service xinetd restart Install yam, add the rhel3as-i386 ISO files, configure Yam and add the following directive in /etc/yam.conf: tftpdir = /tftpboot/yam Then run: yam -vg Then create a pxelinux configuration, by putting the following content in /tftpboot/yam/rhel3as-i386/pxelinux.cfg/01-00-50-56-0d-ba-be default linux prompt 0 label linux kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img text kssendmac ks=http://172.16.21.1/footprint/ keymap=be-latin1 vnc serial Then put a working kickstart file in: /var/www/html/footprint/127.16.21.5-kickstart Finally create a vmware disk-image using a tool that is shipped with qemu: qemu-img create -f vmdk vmx/footprint-disk.vmdk 2G and use the vmx/footprint.vmx configuration by doing: vmplayer vmx/footprint.vmx it will automatically use the host-only configuration of vmware (vmnet1), connect to dnsmasq to get an IP address, PXE boot, get the kickstart-file from the footprint website and start the installation. If you want to follow the progress of your kickstart installation, simply use multitail to follow both configuration files: multitail -i /var/log/messages -I /var/log/httpd/access_log During the installation you can also connect to the serial console by doing: dtach -a vmx/footprint-serial0 After 5 to 10 minutes, you should have a login-prompt.