Setting Up a Network Boot Server
To be able to deploy a system through the PXE boot protocol, you need
to set up a network boot server providing the services DHCP and tftp.
With dnsmasq
an utility exists which allows to setup all needed
services at once:
Installing and Configuring DHCP and TFTP with dnsmasq
The following instructions can only serve as an example. Depending on your
network structure, the IP addresses, ranges and domain settings needs to
be adapted to allow the DHCP server to work within your network. If you
already have a DHCP server running in your network, make sure that the
filename
and next-server
directives are correctly set on this server.
The following steps describe how to set up dnsmasq to work as DHCP and TFTP server.
Install the
dnsmasq
package.Create the file
/etc/dnsmasq.conf
and insert the following content# Don't function as a DNS server. port=0 # Log information about DHCP transactions. log-dhcp # Set the root directory for files available via FTP, # usually "/srv/tftpboot": tftp-root=TFTP_ROOT_DIR enable-tftp dhcp-range=BOOT_SERVER_IP,proxy
In the next step it’s required to decide for the boot method. There is the PXE loader provided via pxelinux.0 from the syslinux package and there is the GRUB loader provided via the grub package.
Note
Placeholders
Replace all placeholders (written in uppercase) with data fitting your network setup.
2.1. insert the following content to use pxelinux.0:
# The boot filename, Server name, Server Ip Address dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0,,BOOT_SERVER_IP # Disable re-use of the DHCP servername and filename fields as extra # option space. That's to avoid confusing some old or broken # DHCP clients. dhcp-no-override # PXE menu. The first part is the text displayed to the user. # The second is the timeout, in seconds. pxe-prompt="Booting FOG Client", 1 # The known types are x86PC, PC98, IA64_EFI, Alpha, Arc_x86, # Intel_Lean_Client, IA32_EFI, BC_EFI, Xscale_EFI and X86-64_EFI # This option is first and will be the default if there is no input # from the user. pxe-service=X86PC, "Boot to FOG", pxelinux.0 pxe-service=X86-64_EFI, "Boot to FOG UEFI", ipxe pxe-service=BC_EFI, "Boot to FOG UEFI PXE-BC", ipxeNote
On boot of a network client with that configuration the default pxelinux.0 config file is expected at
TFTP_ROOT_DIR/pxelinux.cfg/default
2.2. insert the following content to use grub:
# The boot filename, Server name, Server Ip Address dhcp-boot=boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.0,,BOOT_SERVER_IPWhen using grub the referenced dhcp-boot grub module must be genereated. To do this change the directory to
TFTP_ROOT_DIR
and create thesetvars.conf
with the following content:set root=(tftp) set net_default_server=BOOT_SERVER_IP set prefix=boot/grub2Now call the following commands to create the grub module
$ grub2-mknetdir --net-directory=TFTP_ROOT_DIR --subdir=boot/grub2 $ grub2-mkimage -O i386-pc-pxe \ --output boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.0 \ --prefix=/boot/grub2 \ -c setvars.conf \ pxe tftpNote
On boot of a network client with that configuration the grub config file is expected at
TFTP_ROOT_DIR/boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Run the dnsmasq server by calling:
systemctl start dnsmasq