pxeboot

Configures PXE and iPXE related boot scripts and images on an web server.

Also creates preseed files used to automate OS installation.

See the ipxe-build repo for building iPXE payload images.

The iPXE boot.ipxe script:

Has a menu that reports system information and network status
Gives options for installation (interactive and autoinstall) and diagnostic tools (currently: memtest)
- Alternate options to help debug or supply nonfree firmware
List of images in the iPXE menu is specified by the pxeboot_boot_images variable for customizing which tools are available.
By default, continues boot normally after 10 seconds

Also populates the kernel, initrd, and other files needed to network boot.

For fully automated installation, separate Debian/Ubuntu preseed files are created based on the serial number of the device (and possibly other criteria like MAC address in the future). Hosts are defined in the pxeboot_hosts list of dicts, which each have these keys:

domain: Domain extension for the host
hostname: Hostname of the system
iface: (optional) Network interface to use when setting up the system. This is primarily to work around this bug which can cause the wrong interface to be selected in the install process: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netcfg/+bug/713385
To allow iPXE to load a file specific to the hardware, one or both of these keys must be included:
- serial: Device serial number, must match value given in SMBIOS
- mac_address: MAC address of the network card, colon separated format

Documentation of the preseed process can be found in these links:

Contents of the preseed file: https://help.ubuntu.com/18.04/installation-guide/amd64/apbs04.html
All preseed configuration options: https://preseed.debian.net/debian-preseed/
iPXE docs on preseed files and kernel arguments: https://ipxe.org/appnote/debian_preseed

Some systems may need additional firmware to boot properly (for example, to initialize network cards), which can be supplied during boot as another cpio file: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/NetbootFirmware

Additional references:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/PXE-netboot-install https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/example-preseed.txt

iPXE script examples: https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz

Example Playbook

- hosts: all
  vars:
    pxeboot_hosts:
      - {domain: 'example.com', hostname: 'server1', serial: 'abc123'}
      - {domain: 'example.com', hostname: 'server2', serial: 'abc123', iface: 'eno2'}
  roles:
    - pxeboot

pxeboot

Example Playbook

License and Author