[K12OSN] Trouble with PXE Boot; Fedora 17

[Gianluca Cecchi]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Adrin Gharakhani wrote:
> Thank you Gianluca,
>
> The prompt indeed wanted a "linux" input at the boot prompt. However, it
> went to the next line and searched for "kernel vmlinuz.ltsp" and couldn't
> find such a file. I actually did a global search for vmlinuz.ltsp and didn't
> find it in my system either. So, something is definitely wrong in the fedora
> installation package. This package was installed directly from the fedora 17
> repository, so I would have expected it should be self contained, unless the
> step that involves ltsp-server-tweaks (which I didn't perform because that
> file is also missing) is a prerequisite.
>
> If anyone can provide a copy of their ltsp-server-tweaks script for centos
> I'd appreciate it. Perhaps I can use that as a template for fedora

I currently have not an ltsp environment with Fedora 17 but I do have
fedora 17 (with ip 192.168.1.141 in example files below) configured to
allow pxe booting + dhcpd/tftp services necessary to boot kernel over
the lan.
In fact I used it to install a Fedora 18 on a server with PXE boot and
this configuration
my config

When I had to provide this kind of installation service I installed
these packages:
Jan 19 15:18:45 Installed: 2:xinetd-2.3.15-1.fc17.x86_64
Jan 19 15:18:45 Installed: tftp-server-5.2-2.fc17.x86_64
Jan 19 15:21:59 Installed: syslinux-4.05-1.fc17.x86_64
Jan 19 15:22:54 Installed: 12:dhcp-4.2.4-16.P2.fc17.x86_64


- xinetd installed and enabled
[root at ope46 ~]# systemctl status xinetd.service
xinetd.service - Xinetd A Powerful Replacement For Inetd
 Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/xinetd.service; enabled)
 Active: active (running) since Sat, 26 Jan 2013 10:20:01 +0100; 1h 15min ago
...

In case you have to:

# systemctl enable xinetd.service
# systemctl start xinetd.service

- tftpd service enabled through xinetd
see your /etc/xinetd.d/tftp
I changed mine putting
        disable                 = no

and restarting xinetd service

- dhcpd installed and enabled
[root at ope46 ~]# systemctl status dhcpd.service
dhcpd.service - DHCPv4 Server Daemon
 Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/dhcpd.service; disabled)
 Active: inactive (dead)
   Docs: man:dhcpd(8)
         man:dhcpd.conf(5)
 CGroup: name=systemd:/system/dhcpd.service

in my case it is disabled because I use it only when necessary not to
conflict with dnsmasq used by libvirtd providing dhcp functionality to
its virtual machines

my dhcpd.conf lines:

allow booting;
allow bootp;
ddns-update-style interim;
ignore client-updates;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
range dynamic-bootp 192.168.1.200 192.168.1.240;
next-server 192.168.1.141;
filename "pxelinux.0"; }

here the next-server ip is the one of my server providing tftpd..

- tftp root directory on fedora 17 is /var/lib/tftpboot/ by default
(it should match entry in  /etc/xinetd.d/tftp
in my case default one for f17:
        server_args             = -s /var/lib/tftpboot
)

In my case I only need a default entry for tftp clients that I change
when necessary.
see docs for mac based ones or more complex configs


[root at ope46 ~]# ll /var/lib/tftpboot/
total 32032
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27900268 Jan 19 15:52 initrd.img
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root    26460 Jan 19 15:34 pxelinux.0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     4096 Jan 20 16:53 pxelinux.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  4862486 Jan 19 15:52 vmlinuz

[root at ope46 ~]# ll /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 153 Jan 20 16:53 default

vmlinuz and initrd are the Fedora 18 installation ones, downloaded
over the wire by clients to run anaconda
the "default" file contains

[root at ope46 ~]# cat /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
default pxeboot
timeout 50
label pxeboot
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img repo=http://192.168.1.141/f18
ks=http://192.168.1.141/anaconda-ks.cfg

(I also provide httpd service through the next-server server that is
my tftp server and I install f18 through kickstart)

Please notice that
[root at ope46 ~]# rpm -qf /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0
file /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0 is not owned by any package

In fact I copied there from syslinux package:
cp /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /var/lib/tftpboot

So, keep from my env what can be of help for your LTSP config.

HIH,
Gianluca