/PXEServer

PXE Boot and Kickstart Server Project

Primary LanguageJinja

PXE Server README

Instructions for using the PXEServer playbooks. Originally these playbooks were designed to work in conjunction with the Fedora_Remix Project (https://github.com/tmichett/Fedora_Remix). They will take the LiveCD and installed OS from this project and create a PXE Boot Kickstart server allowing the booting of the customized Live Fedora Remix.

They can also be used to create a regular PXEBoot server, but some slight modifications are required to the playbook to copy different PXE images and Kickstart Trees.

The playbooks already have default values set and they can be run as-is on the FedoraRemix ISO installation produced from the Fedora Remix project. They will result in the following:

Network Defaults

DHCP Server IP: 192.168.0.254 DHCP Server/PXE Server Name: master.example.com DHCP Pools: 192.168.0.XXX DNS Domain: example.com

PXE Boot Defaults

  • Fedora 38 Boot Images

    • initrd.img

    • vmlinuz

  • Fedora 38 Live Image

    • Boot Fedora 38 Remix 64-bit (LiveCD)

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There are several variable files that are needed for the playbooks to run, but should not be changed.

  • tftp_files.yml

  • tftp_boot_files.yml

  • template_file_vars.yml

  • file_copy_vars.yml

These files are used in the playbook to provide a list of files and templates that are to be copied or used as part of the playbook and are used in the various loops.

The ony potential file you might want to modify is the tftp_boot_files.yml if you intend to provide additional boot files.

Customizing the PXE Server for Various Networks

PXE Variables

Most of the PXE Variables are located in the pxe_vars.yml file.

install_packages: Packages to install for creating a PXEBoot kickstart server. These should most likely remain static and shouldn’t need to be changed.

install_packages
---
## Packages to install
install_packages:
  - httpd
  - bind
  - bind-utils
  - vsftpd
  - createrepo
  - tree
  - syslinux
  - tftp-server
  - dhcp-server
  - firewalld

service_list: List of services to enable from installed packages. These should most likely remain static and shouldn’t need to be changed.

service_list
---
## Service Information
service_list:
  - httpd
  - vsftpd
  - named
  - dhcpd
  - tftp.socket

firewall_services: List of firewall services to enable from running services. These should most likely remain static and shouldn’t need to be changed.

firewall_services
---
## Configuration of Network Ports
firewall_services:
  - dhcp
  - ftp
  - dns
  - tftp
  - http
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The network_adapter is used in the playbook with a task tagged never. If you intend to run the playbook to configure the DHCP Server’s network adapter, run it first with the tag never and confirm that the NIC has been configured as desired.
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The network_subnet defines the left-most portion of the IP address that exists in the /24 subnet. For example, if you want the IP address of the DHCP server to be 172.25.250.254, you would set the network_subnet to be 172.25.250. This would ensure that the address of the DHCP server would be 172.25.250.254 as you would be in the 172.25.250 IP subnet space.

The actual IP address will always be .254 as that is part of what is contained in the various configuration files and JINJA templates.
Network Subnet Settings for DHCP
---
## Configure Network and DNS Settings

network_adapter: enp7s0    ## Network adapter to bind DHCP to (1)
network_subnet: 192.168.0   ## Network Subnet. This is the left-most 3 sections of the subnet. For example, 192.168.0 for the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet (2)
net_subnet_reverse: 0.168.192 ## Network Subnet in reverse order (3)

  1. Network adapter that should be configured as DHCP Server. dhcpd service will bind to this adapter and it should be configured with the network_subnet.254 address.

  2. Subnet and IP Range. The default settings for DHCP is to use a /24 subnet with the DHCP server’s IP being .254 as the last address of that subnet. The first three sets of "." will set the IP scheme for the subnet.

  3. The reverse of the subnet which can be used easily for the DNS services

The DNS server settings require a domain name, in this instance we are using dns_domain_name to create example.com domain. It also creates the name of the DHCP server, in this instance we want it configured as master. These values are used in the various JINJA2 templates to create the service configuration files.

Network Name and DNS Resolution Settings for BIND DNS Server
---
## Configure Domain Settings

dns_domain_name: example.com  ## Network domain name. For example we want master.example.com to be the master server FQDN, domain name is "example.com"
dns_server_hostname: master   ## Short hostname of the PXE boot/kickstart server. For example we want master.example.com to be the master server FQDN, the dns_server_hostname is "master".