74 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
74 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# Documentation and information relating to my PXE boot server
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## Brief Infrastructure Overview
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Hosted on a headless Debian 13 VM
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dnsmasq used for TFTP, Nginx for HTTP and GRUB serving as the bootloader
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DHCP options handled via my already existing OpenWrt router
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Kernel, initramfs and other required files exist in a dedicated storage directory/disk and are exposed to Nginx via symbolic links
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## High Level Architecture Overivew
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```
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Client (bare-metal or VM) configured to network boot turns on
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DHCP request broadcast
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OpenWrt DHCP server responds, assigning an IP and providing PXE options in the response
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Client downloads the GRUB bootloader, its theme and configuration files via TFTP
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Once the client is within GRUB you can select the desired environment to boot into
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Kernel, initramfs and other required files are loaded over HTTP via Nginx
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If needed, additional files are now downloaded from the Internet
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Selected OS / installer or environment is now loaded
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```
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## Features
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- Lightweight, with less than 2GB of disk space and under 200MB of RAM used for the VM with fresh headless Debian 13 install
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- UEFI and BIOS support
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- Custom GRUB theme for UEFI based systems
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- Zero DHCP dependency on server, will work in an existing environment
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- TFTP for bootstrapping, HTTP for payloads
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- Easy to add additional operating systems as additional menu entries and HTTP payloads
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- Currently supports booting into AlmaLinux, Arch Linux, Clonezilla, Debian, Memtest and SystemRescue all from the same menu
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- Installer files reside in dedicated storage directory which Nginx reads via symbolic links, allowing storage for payloads to be easily expanded
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- Default option of booting into the already existing local disk allowing clients to remain configured for network boot
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- Naming comes from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, as this is PXE (Pixie) boot, and Navi is your trusty fairy
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## Images
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## Extremely useful documentation
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https://manpages.debian.org/wheezy/dnsmasq-base/dnsmasq.8.en.html
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https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4578.html
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https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/dhcp
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https://clonezilla.org/livepxe.php
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https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/PXE_network_booting/
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https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Network.html
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https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Theme-file-format.html |