Setting PXE Network Boot Server in Linux

Dear All,
               Here I am showing you another way to configure PXE Network Boot Server on Linux. I have shown this in my previous post PXE(Preboot eXecution Environment) Installation and Configuration . This will be really helpful when you have no CD/DVD Drive in your Client System.

Requirements : You will need following thing to be configure for this...

• A DHCP server
• A TFTP server (tftpd-hpa)
• vmlinuz and initrd.img from your distribution of choice
• The PXELINUX.0 boot loader and a suitable config file
• Network installation Server that may be NFS, FTP, or HTTP. Here I am using ftp server. 
• system-config-netboot package for pxeos commands.

Note : My server IP -- 192.168.2.199

1.) Install the TFTP server:
Ensure you use the tftpd-hpa package, as PXELINUX requires that the boot server has a TFTP server which supports the “tsize” TFTP option. If you don’t use tftpd-hpa you will most likely see an error such as ‘TFTP server does not support the tsize option’.
              You can make use of yum or can download it from net. I am showing you comtents of "/etc/xinetd.d/tftp" here
[root@server199 ~]# cat /etc/xinetd.d/tftp
# default: off
# description: The tftp server serves files using the trivial file transfer \
#       protocol.  The tftp protocol is often used to boot diskless \
#       workstations, download configuration files to network-aware printers, \
#       and to start the installation process for some operating systems.
service tftp
{
        socket_type             = dgram
        protocol                = udp
        wait                    = yes
        user                    = root
        server                  = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
        server_args        = -s /tftpboot   [-- my Dir where I have configure ftp Server]
        disable                 = no
        per_source              = 11
        cps                     = 100 2
        flags                   = IPv4
}


2.) Install and configure dhcp server:
                        I am not going in detail of dhcp server just showing you contents of dhcpd.conf file.


[root@server199 ~]# cat /etc/dhcpd.conf
ddns-update-style interim;
ignore client-updates;

allow booting;
allow bootp;
class "pxeclients" {
      match if substring(option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient";
      next-server 192.168.2.199;
      filename "linux-install/pxelinux.0";
}


subnet 192.168.2.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

# --- default gateway
        option routers                  192.168.2.1;
        option subnet-mask              255.255.255.0;

#       option nis-domain               "domain.org";
#        option domain-name             "xalted.org";
        option domain-name-servers      192.168.0.1;

        option time-offset              -18000; # Eastern Standard Time
#       option ntp-servers              192.168.1.1;
#       option netbios-name-servers     192.168.1.1;
# --- Selects point-to-point node (default is hybrid). Don't change this unless
# -- you understand Netbios very well
#       option netbios-node-type 2;

        range dynamic-bootp 192.168.2.10 192.168.2.197;
        default-lease-time 21600;
        max-lease-time 43200;

       
}

3.) Setting up PXELINUX:
                    
PXELINUX is a SYSLINUX derivative, for booting Linux off a network server. Essentially, it is used to load a linux kernel of your choice on to your machine. You specify which kernel to load in a config file. You can download the latest pxelinux.0 file from kernel.org. You will need to extract it from the syslinux archive .
You are going to be creating a folder structure that will eventually look like this:


[root@server199 /]# mkdir -p /tftpboot/linux-install/
[root@server199 /]# mkdir -p /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg
[root@server199 /]# touch /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg/default
[root@server199 /]# mkdir -p /tftpboot/linux-install/distros
[root@server199 /]# mkdir -p /tftpboot/linux-install/distros/centos5.6
[root@server199 /]# vi /tftpboot/linux-install/pxelinux.cfg/default
[root@server199 pxelinux.cfg]# cat default
default local
timeout 100
prompt 1
display msgs/boot.msg
F1 msgs/boot.msg
F2 msgs/general.msg
F3 msgs/expert.msg
F4 msgs/param.msg
F5 msgs/rescue.msg
F7 msgs/snake.msg

label 0
  localboot 1

label 1
  kernel centos/vmlinuz
  append initrd=centos/initrd.img ramdisk_size=8419 method=ftp://192.168.2.199/centos5.6 ip=dhcp
[root@server199 pxelinux.cfg]#
[root@server199 pxelinux.cfg]#
[root@server199 pxelinux.cfg]# cat /tftpboot/linux-install/menu.msg

                          .-=-.          .--.
              __        .'     '.       /  " )
      _     .'  '.     /   .-.   \     /  .-'0c\0a
     ( \   / .-.  \   /   /   \   \   /  /    0c^0a
      \ `-` /   \  `-'   /     \   `-`  /
       `-.-`     '.____.'       `.____.'
07
                                       _
  __ _ _ __   __ _  ___ ___  _ __   __| | __ _
 / _` | '_ \ / _` |/ __/ _ \| '_ \ / _` |/ _` |
| (_| | | | | (_| | (_| (_) | | | | (_| | (_| |
 \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|\___\___/|_| |_|\__,_|\__,_|

07

Choose one of the following labels in order to boot:
- linux (localboot)
- centos5.6

[root@server199 ~]# tree -d /tftpboot/
/tftpboot/  -----------Manual Created
`-- linux-install----------Manual Created
    |-- centos-----------
    |-- distros----------        Manual Created
    |   `-- centos5.6  ....Manual Created
    |       |-- CentOS
    |       |-- NOTES
    |       |-- images
    |       |   |-- pxeboot
    |       |   `-- xen
    |       |-- isolinux
    |       `-- repodata
    |-- msgs  ------------ Manual Created
    `-- pxelinux.cfg   --------  Manual Created

13 directories
[root@server199 linux-install]# tree msgs/
msgs/   --- Manual Created
`-- boot.msg   ---- Manual Created

0 directories, 1 file
[root@server199 linux-install]# pwd
/tftpboot/linux-install
[root@server199 linux-install]# ll
total 48
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Aug 22 12:42 centos
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root  4096 Aug 22 11:36 distros
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   620 Aug 22 11:41 menu.msg   
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Aug 22 12:45 msgs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 26442 Aug 22 11:45 pxelinux.0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 Aug 23 12:44 pxelinux.cfg
[root@server199 linux-install]#

4.) Setting up ftp Server :
                             Finally Setup ftp server. You can install vsftpd using yum or can download from net. I am just showing you my vsftpd.conf file.


[root@server199 ~]# cat /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
anonymous_enable=YES
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
connect_from_port_20=YES
xferlog_std_format=YES
listen=YES
pam_service_name=vsftpd
userlist_enable=NO
tcp_wrappers=YES
vsftpd_log_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log
# Allow anonymous FTP?
anon_max_rate=0
anon_mkdir_write_enable=NO
anon_root=/tftpboot/linux-install/distros
anon_world_readable_only=YES
anon_umask=0022
anon_upload_enable=NO
anon_other_write_enable=NO
no_anon_password=NO
userlist_deny=NO







Now copy the Centos5.6 DVD to location "/tftpboot/linux-install/distros".
[root@server199 distros]# ll
total 4 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Aug 22 12:03 centos5.6
[root@server199 distros]# cd centos5.6/
[root@server199 centos5.6]# ls
CentOS      NOTES                  RELEASE-NOTES-en.html     RELEASE-NOTES-fr.html  RELEASE-NOTES-pt_BR.html  TRANS.TBL
EULA        RELEASE-NOTES-cs       RELEASE-NOTES-en_US       RELEASE-NOTES-ja       RELEASE-NOTES-ro          vmlinuz
GPL         RELEASE-NOTES-cs.html  RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html  RELEASE-NOTES-ja.html  RELEASE-NOTES-ro.html
images      RELEASE-NOTES-de       RELEASE-NOTES-es          RELEASE-NOTES-nl       repodata
initrd.img  RELEASE-NOTES-de.html  RELEASE-NOTES-es.html     RELEASE-NOTES-nl.html  RPM-GPG-KEY-beta
isolinux    RELEASE-NOTES-en       RELEASE-NOTES-fr          RELEASE-NOTES-pt_BR    RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5



Finally restart the following services:

[root@server199 linux-install]# /etc/init.d/xinetd restart
Stopping xinetd:                                           [  OK  ]
Starting xinetd:                                           [  OK  ]
[root@server199 linux-install]# /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart
Shutting down vsftpd:                                      [  OK  ]
Starting vsftpd for vsftpd:                                [  OK  ]
[root@server199 linux-install]# /etc/init.d/dhcpd restart
Shutting down dhcpd:                                       [  OK  ]
Starting dhcpd:                                            [  OK  ]
[root@server199 linux-install]#

Last Step add "pxeos"  entry by issuing following command:

[root@server199 linux-install]# pxeos -a -i "Centos5.6" -p FTP -D 0 -s 192.168.2.199 -L /centos5.6/ centos
[root@server199 linux-install]#


and then test it from client by changing boot order of client system and make PXE Boot as First boot device.

!Enjoy 
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