[PXE Server ]: Install And Configure PXE Server On Ubuntu 15.04

Install And Configure PXE Server On Ubuntu 15.04

This tutorial describes how to setup a PXE server on Ubuntu 15.04 server and how to configure a PXE client.

Now, let us start to setup and configure PXE server on Ubuntu 15.04. This method should work on previous Ubuntu versions like Ubuntu 14.10, 14.04 etc.

Scenario

My test box(pxe server) details are given below:

• Operating System: Ubuntu 15.04 server.
• IP Address: 192.168.1.101/24.

Install PXE Server

First, you should Install and configure DHCP server on your PXE server.

Install DHCP Server in Ubuntu

Let us see how to install and configure DHCP server in Ubuntu 15.04 64 bit server.

To install DHCP server on Ubuntu 15.04, enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install isc-dhcp-server

2.1 Configuration

DHCP server configuration is not that difficult. First, we have to assign on what interfaces should the DHCP server (dhcpd) serve DHCP requests. In my case, I have only one Interface on my system (eth0), so I assigned eth0.

To do that, edit file /etc/default/isc-dhcp-server,

sudo vi /etc/default/isc-dhcp-server

Assign the network interface:

[...]
INTERFACES="eth0"

Save and close the file.

Now, edit dhcpd.conf file,

sudo vi /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

Make the changes as shown below.

Set the domain name and domain-name servers:

[...]

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
 option domain-name "unixmen.local";
 option domain-name-servers server.unixmen.local;

[...]

If this DHCP server is the official DHCP server for the local network, you should uncomment the following line:

[...]
authoritative;
[...]

Define the sunbet, range of ip addresses, domain and domain name servers like below:

[...]
# A slightly different configuration for an internal subnet.
 subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
 range 192.168.1.20 192.168.1.30;
 option domain-name-servers server.unixmen.local;
 option domain-name "unixmen.local";
 option routers 192.168.1.1;
 option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
 default-lease-time 600;
 max-lease-time 7200;
 }
[...]

If you want to assign a fixed IP address to your client, you should enter it’s MAC id and the IP address in the following directive. For example, I want to assign a fixed IP address 192.168.1.15 to my Ubuntu client, therefore I modified the following directive as shown below.

[...]
host ubuntu-client {
 hardware ethernet 00:22:64:4f:e9:3a;
 fixed-address 192.168.1.15;
 }
[...]

After making all the changes you want, save and close the file. Be mindful that if you have unused entries on the dhcpd.conf file, comment all of them. Otherwise, you’ll get issues while starting dhcp service.

Now, restart dhcp service:

In Ubuntu 15.04:

sudo systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server

In Ubuntu 14.04 and older systems:

sudo service isc-dhcp-server restart

Likewise, you can start/stop dhcp service as shown below:

In Ubuntu 15.04 systems:

sudo systemctl start isc-dhcp-server

sudo systemctl stop isc-dhcp-server

In Ubuntu 14.04 and older systems:

sudo service isc-dhcp-server start

sudo service isc-dhcp-server stop

3. Configure DHCP Clients

Now, go to the client configuration network settings and change the IP settings to Automatic (DHCP).

Here is my Lubuntu 14.04 settings:

Restart the network or reboot the client system to get IP address automatically from the DHCp server.

Now, you should see the IP address has been automatically assigned to the clients from the DHCP server.

Run the following command from the client system Terminal:

sudo ifconfig

DHCP Server will surely be providing IP to clients..

Now, install the following necessary packages for setting up PXE environment:

sudo apt-get install apache2 tftpd-hpa inetutils-inetd

Configure PXE Server

Edit file /etc/default/tftpd-hpa,

sudo nano /etc/default/tftpd-hpa

Add the following lines to enable TFTP server.

[...]
RUN_DAEMON="yes"
OPTIONS="-l -s /var/lib/tftpboot"

Then, edit file /etc/inetd.conf,

sudo nano /etc/inetd.conf

Scroll down to the end, and modify or add the following line.

tftp    dgram   udp    wait    root    /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /var/lib/tftpboot

Save and close the file. If you use IPv6, please change the word udp to udp4.

Restart tftp service:

sudo /etc/init.d/tftpd-hpa restart

Copying Ubuntu Installation files to PXE Server

You can either mount the Ubuntu Installation ISO image and copy them to your PXE server or can directly copy the files from your Installation CD/DVD.

For the testing purpose, Here I am going to deploy Ubuntu 15.04 server OS on my PXE client, so I mounted the ISO image on /mnt directory.

I already have the ISO image on my home directory, so I ran the following command to mount it on /mnt directory.

sudo mount -o loop /home/sk/ubuntu-15.04-server-amd64.iso /mnt/

The Ubuntu 14.04 ISO image has been mounted successfully. Now, go to the /mnt/ directory, and copy the required files from the ISO image to /var/lib/tftpboot/ directory.

cd /mnt/

sudo cp -fr install/netboot/* /var/lib/tftpboot/

Create a directory called ubuntu in the apache root document folder.

sudo mkdir /var/www/html/ubuntu

Note: On Ubuntu 14.10 and previous versions, the apache root document folder is /var/www/.

Copy all the files from the Ubuntu ISO.

sudo cp -fr /mnt/* /var/www/html/ubuntu/

Now, edit file /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default,

sudo nano /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

Add the following contents at the end. Make sure you’ve replaced the IP address with your own.

[...]
label linux
        kernel ubuntu-installer/amd64/linux
        append ks=http://192.168.1.101/ks.cfg vga=normal initrd=ubuntu-installer/amd64/initrd.gz
ramdisk_size=16432 root=/dev/rd/0 rw  --

For 32bit PXE clients:

[...]
label linux
        kernel ubuntu-installer/i386/linux
        append ks=http://192.168.1.101/ks.cfg vga=normal initrd=ubuntu-installer/i386/initrd.gz
ramdisk_size=16432 root=/dev/rd/0 rw  --

Replace 192.168.1.101 with your own PXE server’s IP address.

Save and close the file.

Configure DHCP Server

Now, we have to configure the DHCP server to work with PXE server.

Edit file /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf,

sudo nano /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

Add the following lines at the end:

allow booting;
allow bootp;
option option-128 code 128 = string;
option option-129 code 129 = text;
next-server 192.168.1.101;
filename "pxelinux.0";

Save and close the file.

Now, We have come to the end of the PXE server configuration. Restart DHCP server.

sudo service isc-dhcp-server restart

Congratulations! We have completed the PXE server configuration.

PXE Client Configuration

The client may be any system that has network boot enabled option (PXE boot). You can enable this option in your Bios settings.

Due to lack of resources, I have created a Virtual Machine client on my Oracle VirtualBox.

Open up the Oracle VirtualBox. Click on the New button in the menu bar.

Enter the Virtual machine name.

Enter the RAM size to the Virtual machine.

Select “Create a virtual hard drive now” option and click Create.

Select the Virtual hard drive file type. If you don’t know to what to select, leave the default option and click Next.

Select whether the new virtual hard drive file should grow as it is used or if it should be created as fixed size.

Enter the Virtual hard drive size.

That’s it. Our Virtual Client machine has been created. Now, we should make the client to boot from the network. To do that, go to the Vitual machine Settings option.

Select the System tab on the left, and Choose Network from the boot order option, and un-check all the other options on the right side.

Then, go to the Network tab and select “Bridged Adapter” from the “Attached to” drop down box.

Once you done all the above steps, click OK to save the changes. That’s it. Now power on the Virtual client system. You should see the following screen.

That’s it. The rest of the installation is same as the way we do in local installation. Start installing Ubuntu on your client using the PXE server.

Good luck!

Reference:

• Ubuntu Community wiki