1 | PXE-utilities |
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2 | ------------- |
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3 | |
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4 | These is a release of the SARA utilities that we use to boot our nodes with |
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5 | PXE network cards. This was developed because we always want to use the |
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6 | PXE network card as our first boot device. With pxelinux which is derivative |
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7 | of syslinux you can specify how the node must boot by a configuration |
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8 | file. This configuration is placed in, eg '/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg' directory. |
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9 | |
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10 | In our setup we have a default setup. The default setup is to boot from |
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11 | harddisk. When node boots it fetches the default configuraion file and the |
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12 | configuration file tells the node to boot from the harddisk. This setup |
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13 | is used for nodes that have already been installed by systemimager. |
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14 | |
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15 | At SARA we have developed a strategy how to install a fresh node. |
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16 | |
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17 | 1) The ip-address in our setup is known for the new node. So |
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18 | we make a link in the '/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg' directory to a |
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19 | pxe config file which tells that it has to fetch the kernel en |
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20 | root filesystem from our bootserver, eg: |
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21 | 0A000A02 ---> default.node_install (10.0.10.2) |
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22 | |
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23 | 2) The client starts and uses the systemimager software to install |
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24 | the node. The last line of installation script connects to a |
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25 | daemon on the bootserver. This daemon will remove the PXE config file |
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26 | for this node. |
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27 | |
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28 | 3) The node reboots and will use the default pxe config file which will |
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29 | instruct the node to boot from harddisk. |
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30 | |
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31 | This release contains the following utilities: |
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32 | |
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33 | pxeconfigd) |
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34 | This is daemon that removes the pxe configuration file of a node. |
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35 | |
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36 | pxeconfig) |
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37 | With this interactive program we can specify which pxe config file |
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38 | a node or nodes must use. This utility will create the links |
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39 | in '/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg' |
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40 | |
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41 | hexls) |
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42 | Is a utility that diplays a directory and if in this directory |
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43 | contains HEX files it will convert them to IP-numbers. |
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44 | |
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45 | All this utilities are written in Python. |
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46 | |
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47 | |
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48 | Bas van der Vlies |
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