vagrant-bsdpy

This is a basic Vagrant lab for testing and hacking on BSDPy, a Python NetBoot server written by Pepijn Bruienne. It is based on a Debian 8 (Jessie) box that supports both the virtualbox and vmware_fusion providers.

The default configuration is to use HTTP NBIs, but there is documentation in the Vagrantfile on how to configure synced folders for use with NFS NBIs. To be able to test this with other physical Macs, I configure a public network interface in the Vagrantfile.

Components

A NetBoot solution requires at least three services:

• BSDP, implemented with BSDPy.
• TFTP, implemented with TFTPD-HPA.
• NFS or HTTP for serving the actual boot image. This project uses the NFS kernel server, and Nginx for HTTP.

There is no vanilla DHCP solution included in this project. Clients will need to be able to acquire an IP address at boot time from elsewhere.

This project manages the BSDPy process using runit. Josh Timberman has a great blog post on this.

Setup

Clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/timsutton/vagrant-bsdpy

Clone BSDPy from a branch/source of your choosing within the repo, for example:

cd vagrant-bsdpy
git clone https://bitbucket.org/bruienne/bsdpy

Put NBIs in the nbi directory.

Bring up the VM:

vagrant up

This has been tested to work with both the default VirtualBox providers and the HashiCorp VMware providers. Specify the provider using the --provider option or by setting the VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER environment variable.

This will provision the VM and set up the shared folder. At this point the BSDPy service should be running. You can also tail the logfile to view progress:

vagrant ssh -c "tail -f /var/log/bsdpserver.log"

Runit config

The process will be started with the run script located at /etc/sv/bsdpy/run. This script is built when Vagrant provisions the machine, and the arguments can be customized by setting the BSDPSERVER_ARGS constant at the top of the Vagrantfile.

Use sv to manage the service:

sv restart bsdpy
sv stop bsdpy
sv start bsdpy
sv 1 bsdpy (send a USR1 signal to have BSDPy rescan images)

You can also use typical init-style commands like service restart bsdpy.

Rsync

If you are using rsync synced folders (which might be the case if BSDPy is configured to point clients to NFS), don't forget to sync any changes you make to NBIs:

vagrant rsync

or have Vagrant poll for changes:

vagrant rsync-auto