PXE Boot

This project sets up a PXE/TFTP environment using Virtualbox and Ubuntu 16.04.

Setup VirtualBox PXE Environment

All of my development will be done using MacOS Sierra.

Prerequisites

Install the Following

• VirtualBox >= 5.1.14
• VirtualBox Extension Pack
• Vagrant >= 1.9.3
  • vagrant-hostmanager
  • vagrant-vbguest
  • vagrant-share

NOTE: VirtualBox will only TFTP from the private net of 10.0.2.x. Therefore, you must include 2 adapters: NAT and Host-only. More details to follow.

Once Vagrant is installed be sure to install the plugins:

./install_vagrant_plugins.sh

Enable the Hosts' Apache HTTP Server

The default DocumentRoot for Apache on MacOS is /Library/WebServer/Documents. Let's own this file for our user.

sudo chown -R $USER /Library/WebServer/Documents
rm -rf /Library/WebServer/Documents/*

We need to enable directory browsing for the DocumentRoot. Edit the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and add Indexes to the Options line in the DocumentRoot stanza:

...
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents">

    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
    MultiviewsMatch Any
...

sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Now start or restart Apache:

sudo apachectl start|restart

Browse to this address to see if it worked.

Prepare the HTTP Directory

Download the Ubuntu 16.04 ISO:

wget http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04.2/ubuntu-16.04.2-server-amd64.iso

NOTE: You will be unable to directly mount this ISO on MacOS due it being hybrid (DVD/USB) ISO which can be directly dd'ed to a USB drive and booted.

hdiutil attach -nomount ubuntu-16.04.2-server-amd64.iso

# Take not of which 'disk' is mounted, use in the mount command below

mkdir ~/mnt

mount -t cd9660 /dev/disk2 ~/mnt

mkdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/ubuntu-16.04.2-server-amd64

# NOTE: Trailing backslashes are very important below...

rsync -av --progress ~/mnt/ /Library/WebServer/Documents/ubuntu-16.04.2-server-amd64/

This will put the entire CD contents on the HTTP server.

You will notice that your hosts's HTTP server is exposed on the NAT interface as 10.0.2.2.

Now symlink the dbconf file to the Documents folder:

``bash cd /Library/WebServer/Documents ln -s ~/code/pxe/htdocs/ubuntu-16.04.2-server-amd64.cfg /Library/WebServer/Documents

## Setup the TFTP Directory

This repository contains the necessary TFTP files to get you started.  Let's create a symbolic link to the `~/Library/VirtualBox/TFTP` location.  Your repository location may be different.

```bash
ln -s $HOME/code/github/rancher-dev/TFTP ~/Library/VirtualBox

Let's check:

$ tree ~/Library/VirtualBox/TFTP
/Users/gillies/Library/VirtualBox/TFTP
├── ldlinux.c32
├── libcom32.c32
├── libutil.c32
├── pxelinux.0
├── pxelinux.cfg
│   ├── default
│   └── pxe.cfg
├── ubuntu
│   ├── 16.04
│   │   └── amd64
│   │       ├── initrd.gz
│   │       └── linux
│   └── ubuntu.menu
└── vesamenu.c32

6 directories, 12 files

Test a Box

Note that when you bring up a Virtual Box, the VirtualBox Guest Additions will be installed. Obviously you would not do this in a bare metal environment, but this is needed in the development setting. This is handled in the Vagrantfile so it's not a big deal.

On my machine it takes just under 10 minutes to provision a machine from scratch. This is not normal in a VirtualBox/Vagrant config because we are actually doing a PXE install and starting from a blank .box file. When you install from a normal .box file it is MUCH FASTER. We are trying to emulate a bare metal environment as much as possible.

NOTE: You will have to enter your password for the vagrant-hostmanager to update the /etc/hosts file.

$ vagrant up p0.e.int --no-provision

Then you should be able to SSH to the box:

$ vagrant ssh r0.e.int
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-66-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage
Last login: Thu Mar 23 10:05:18 2017 from 10.0.2.2
ubuntu@rancher0:~$

Vagrantfile

The Vagrantfile reads a data file called nodes.yml. The following VMs are defined:

Private IP	Hostname	Base Box	Time to Create
172.28.128.101	p0.e.int	c33s/empty	10min
172.28.128.102	p1.e.int	ubuntu/xenial64	3min

The default setup is for the p0.e.int is to use the c33s/empty box file which will cause it to PXE boot and install like a bare metal server. If are satisfied with the PXE menu and DebConf setup, you can replace the c33s/empty with the ubuntu/xenial64 for faster testing and rebuilding the environment.

References

Ubuntu 16.10 Server Ubuntu 16.10 Desktop

Ubuntu 16.04 Server Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop

Ubuntu 15.04 Server Ubuntu 15.04 Desktop

Centos 7 Mimimal

SquashFS Kickstarting Ubuntu