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pixieboot

Repository to bootstrap a PXE server easily. Get in a few steps a working setup to boot over network.

It's flexible and programmed modularly. It's easy to use it with existing setups.

Features

  • dhcp proxy support
    • You can install this in addition to your existing DHCP Server without conflict.
  • iPXE for native clients
  • iPXE via chainloading for older clients
    • This supports downloading the kernel images via HTTP (way faster than TFTP)
  • Fully customizable
  • installable via docker

Software used

  • dnsmasq (tftp, dhcp proxy)
  • nfs-kernel-server (NFS Server)
  • nginx
  • iPXE and syslinux packages

Installation

For easy installation, execute

# install dnsmasq or something else
cp config.sh.example config.sh
$EDITOR config.sh
./setup.sh

as root. This might seem spooky, but it only does:

  • install the system images into the current git-repo
  • adding /etc/dnsmasq.d/pixieboot
  • adding /etc/exports.d/pixieboot
  • restart of dnsmasq and nfs-kernel-server

setup.sh

./setup.sh [PARAMETER]

PARAMETER can be of:

system-install   Install and configure
config-write     Write (or update) PXE configuration file
integrate        Configure system-services to use pixieboot for PXE-boot

If PARAMETER is omitted, setup.sh will do everything (integration, install the systems, write config)

Folder structure

integrations
scripts to integrate services to use pixieboot
recipes
the actual scripts, installing the systems
systems
filesystem-roots of all bootable systems

Modular system

The system is kept fully modular. You can easily add new bootable systems or use another TFTP/DHCP server combination.

Adding another system

For adding a new system, you have to create a new so-called recipe. The recipe is a script, containing information for downloading, installing and configuring a new system-chroot.

This recipe should be stored inside the recipes folder and respond to the parameters install or config.

Executed with the config-parameter it should print on STDOUT its configuration to put into PXELINUX config.

Executed with the install-parameter it should install its system into folder of given environment-variable $BASE_SYSTEMS/$DISTRO_NAME. Your recipe should not execute anything if the system seems to be installed already. If it's not installed properly, a manual remove by the user should be neccessary.

I could write 1000s of words here. But it might now be the best for you, to look at the recipes-folder and look, what these scripts do there. Most of the work, for adding new recipes, is just copy and paste.

Using different TFTP or DHCP Servers

  1. Create a new integration file:
    1. Add an executable file to integrations/
    2. The file should integrate pixieboot into the software configuration.
    3. Subsequent calls of this file should not emit bad configuration files.
    4. Available environment-variables are listed in config.sh
  2. Change in config.sh the value of INTEGRATIONS_ENABLED to include your new integration.
  3. Execute ./setup.sh integrate.

Docker

You have to use the docker host-network, as DHCP is not usable via port-forwarding.

Also define the env-variable NFSHOST to match your local IP-Address. Additionally, you must not run a service on port 80, 67 or 53 on your host system.

docker run \
  -h pixieboot \
  --name pixieboot \
  --env NFSHOST=<EXTERNAL_IP_ADDRESS> \
  --net=host \
  --detach \
  bebehei/pixieboot:latest