wiki:WikiStart

Version 19 (modified by Ole.H.Nielsen@…, 17 years ago) (diff)

Added information about the PXE menus

  1. PXE-utilities
    1. Systemimager setup example
    2. Utilities
    3. PXE menu tools
    4. Documentation
    5. How to use this system

PXE-utilities

This is a release of the SARA package of utilities that we use to boot our nodes with PXE-enabled network cards. This was developed because we always want to use the PXE-enabled network card as our first boot device. With pxelinux, which is a derivative of syslinux, you can specify with a PXE configuration file how the node must boot. This configuration is placed in, e.g. /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory.

We use this utiltiy for the following purposes:

  • To instruct a node to do a memory test (​memtest86) .
  • To instruct a node to flash its bios firmware or other firmware via the pxe dos boot method (​memdisk)
  • Installation of a node with the aid of ​systemimager software

Systemimager setup example

In our setup we have a default setup. The default setup is to boot from harddisk. When a node boots it fetches the default configuration file and the configuration file instructs the node to boot from the harddisk. This setup is used for nodes that are being been installed by ​systemimager.

At SARA we have developed the following strategy how to install a fresh node.

  1. The ip-address in our setup is known for the new node. So we make a link in the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory to a pxe config file which instructs that it has to fetch the kernel and root filesystem from our bootserver, eg: 0A000A02 ---> default.node_install (10.0.10.2)
  2. The client starts and uses the systemimager software to install the node. The installation script connects to a daemon on the bootserver. This daemon will remove the PXE config file for this node.
  3. The node reboots and will use the default pxe config file which will instruct the node to boot from harddisk.

Utilities

This release contains the following utilities (All utilities are written in Python):

pxeconfigd::

This is daemon that removes the pxe configuration file of a node.

pxeconfig::

With this program we can specify which pxe config file a node or nodes must use. This utility will create the links in /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

hexls::

Is a utility that diplays a directory, and, if in this directory contains HEX files, it will convert them to IP-numbers and hostnames.

PXE menu tools

The PXE-menu tools are used to control the booting of networked computers directly from the computer's console at the BIOS level before any operating system has been loaded. This is extremely useful for diagnostic purposes, or for selecting an operating system installation method, of an individual computer.

For further information please read the files README-pxemenu and INSTALL-pxemenu. A more detailed discussion of the PXE menu tools is currently in ​https://wiki.fysik.dtu.dk/niflheim/PXE-booting

Documentation

How to install and make use of this package:

An useful link about how to use Systemimager and the pxeconfig tools is:

How to use this system

The system is configured for the following tasks: