Introduction

This repo contains all necessary files to easily maintain (and provision) the netboot services:

• tftp: Exposes the initial bootloader as well as the menus for iPXE to work.
• http: Exposes the assets (Filesystems) via HTTP for iPXE to boot.
• sync: Takes care of syncing the assets to the caching servers.
• cleaner: Takes care of cleaning the assets folder so it won't grow too big.
• monitoring: Monitors the Protocol Endpoints (TFTP / HTTP) and writes them to an Influx DB
• ipxe-menu-generator: Generates IPXE menus for caching servers

Prerequisites

To run the components of this repository, the following is required:

• A Linux virtual machine with docker and docker-compose (both runnable without sudo permissions), which is accessible from other clients in the network on ports 80 (http) and 69 (tftp)
• A way to upload your squashFS images to the netboot server (e.g. scp)
• Correct directory structure on the netboot server (see Directory structure)
• (Optional) A Datadog Instance, if you want to use the monitoring included here

Directory structure

Directory tree on ~/ of the netboot server:

├── cleaner.env
├── docker-compose.yaml
├── ipxe-menu-generator.env
├── monitoring.env
├── netboot
│   ├── assets
│   │   ├── dev
│   │   │   ├── 23-06-28-master-887729b-kernel.json
│   │   │   ├── 23-06-28-master-887729b.squashfs
│   │   ├── kernels
│   │   │   ├── 6.2.0-20-generic
│   │   │   │   ├── initrd
│   │   │   │   └── vmlinuz
│   │   │   └── latest-kernel-version.json
│   │   └── prod
│   │       ├── 23-07-01-master-887729b-kernel.json
│   │       ├── 23-07-01-master-887729b.squashfs
│   └── config
│       └── menus
│           ├── advancedmenu.ipxe
│           ├── menu.ipxe
│           └── netinfo.ipxe
└── sync.env

How it works

We provision the six services using the docker-compose.yaml file. This requires the docker images to be present on the host. Those can be either pulled from our public registry or built manually. Set the correct environment variables in the .env files. Bring your stack up with docker compose up -d.

docker image build -t dgpublicimagesprod.azurecr.io/planetexpress/netboot-tftp:latest ./netboot-services/tftp/
docker image build -t dgpublicimagesprod.azurecr.io/planetexpress/netboot-http:latest ./netboot-services/http/
docker image build -t dgpublicimagesprod.azurecr.io/planetexpress/netboot-sync:latest ./netboot-services/sync/
docker image build -t dgpublicimagesprod.azurecr.io/planetexpress/netboot-cleaner:latest ./netboot-services/cleaner/
docker image build -t dgpublicimagesprod.azurecr.io/planetexpress/netboot-monitoring:latest ./netboot-services/monitoring/
docker image build -t dgpublicimagesprod.azurecr.io/planetexpress/netboot-ipxe-menu-generator:latest ./netboot-services/ipxeMenuGenerator/

Usage

1. Create the directory structure on the netboot server (see Directory structure)
2. Upload your .squashfs + .json files with to the netboot server
3. Build or pull the docker images
4. Set the correct environment variables in the .env files
5. Bring your stack up with docker compose up -d
6. For the monitoring part, check the README

Contribute

No matter how small, we value every contribution! If you wish to contribute,

1. Please create an issue first - this way, we can discuss the feature and flesh out the nitty-gritty details
2. Fork the repository, implement the feature and submit a pull request
3. Your feature will be added once the pull request is merged