ace-osinstaller

To use iPXE to setup my own development machine

This repo is used for creating ipxe.iso without deploying extra DHCP server/tFTP server.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Promptly start as long as there is docker (curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh) and make on your host and get help running make in the root path of this repo.

Usage

Use official ipxe.iso

1. Generate boot.ipxe and put it on http server using make http_server
2. Download official ipxe.iso and follow the steps on Quick Start into PXE cli
3. Run the following cmd

iPXE> dhcp
iPXE> chain http://<your http server ip>/boot.ipxe

Build your own ipxe.iso

Preferred chain loading that we don't build ipxe.iso everytime unless HTTP_SERVER changed and only need to update boot.ipxe on the fly.

make http_server HTTP_SERVER=<the ip for fetching boot.ipxe over HTTP>

There are two artifacts, output/ipxe.iso and www/boot.ipxe and it will launch a http server against www/ dir Then, burn ipxe.iso onto a blank CD-ROM or DVD-ROM or put it into the ISO library for the VM installation on XenServer/Vmware/KVM

For more details usage, just run make to get help.

Add Extra Distro

You can find available distro configuration in gen_embedded.json

1. Add new section as below for new distro support

"New Distro Name": {
        "description": "the details for distro",
        "url": "http://<your local server ip>",
        "kernel": "<relative path>/vmlinuz",
        "initrd": "<relative path>/initrd.img",
        "kernel_args": "<literal as the key name>"
    },

2. Put new distro iso into www dir
3. Restart http server make http_server
4. If wanted to tweak the kernel args, we only need to change it in www/boot.ipxe instead of building ipxe.iso again because of chain loading feature.

There are something specials in answerfile

1. Use /dev/xvda which is simply the Xen disk storage devices as disk partition , you need to update it if you use other Hypervisor
2. Use Text mode instead of desktop environment
3. Create an encrypted password for the user configuration in answerfile

  python3 -c 'import crypt,getpass;pw=getpass.getpass();print(crypt.crypt(pw) if (pw==getpass.getpass("Confirm: ")) else exit())'

4. Install ace-profile in the post install stage

How to dump answerfile infomation after OS installed

Centos

• cat /root/anaconda-ks.cfg

Debian/Ubuntu

1. cat /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat
2. install debconf-utils and run debconf-get-selections -installer to dump preseed

Acknowledgments

• iPXE Download
• The system initialization(Debian)
• Error building ISO
• Debian (stable) preseed example
• Ubuntu (stable) preseed example
• Automated Server Installs for 20.04
• How to unpack/uncompress and repack/re-compress an initial ramdisk (initrd/initramfs) boot image file
  • If ran into the err No TPM chip found, activating TPM-bypass!, please run find . 2>/dev/null | cpio -o -H newc | xz -9 --format=lzma > /tmp/initrd.img to repack, instead of the one in the link above.

Known Issues

• Failed to retrieve preconfiguration file ubuntu 1804 as wget in busybox can not download https url without --no-check-certificate, that need to wait busybox upgrade.
• Load ipxe.iso error as below, it works perfectly after installing isolinux instead of syslinux.

Boot device: CD-Rom0MB medium detected
- failure: could not read boot disk