Build a CentOS7 server for: pxe boot, kickstart, reposync, repotrack, nfs, https (SIDEBAR 1)

Posted on by Daniel Oliver
SIDEBAR 1 – Alternate ways to provide PXE BOOT IMAGES to clients (a summary):
Like most things, there are plenty of other ways to provide PXE BOOT IMAGES to clients.
This section is not intended as fully detailed guide, but rather to offer some ideas of how to approach other PXE/Kickstart scenarios.
Here are a some approaches you may find useful:

Downloaded ISOs can be mounted under /var/www/html/repos/{version}/{}/ and served to NetInstall clients by HTTP (or NFS).

For example, if using a downloaded “CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1810.iso”
  • mkdir /var/www/html/repos/c7x64/ISOeverything/
  • mount /dev/cdrom/ /var/www/html/repos/c7x64/ISOeverything/
If this is done after the above steps (install/config httpd/PXE/etc), ISOeverything should be immediately available to network clients.
If a VM is booted from a netinstall.iso (not PXE), when the install screen asks for source media, enter the local URL for the server hosting “ISOeverything”… “
  • http://{ip-address}/repos/c7x64/ISOeverything
 The files needed by PXE clients can be downloaded from the internet and placed into the target directories, bypassing the need to download ISOs at all.  Now that you’ve seen a couple sets of PXE Boot image files, you can figure out which equivalent files to download directly.
For CentOS and Fedora, the online repos usually follow a naming/pathing convention like these examples:
   (live URLs as the time of this writing)
  •  http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64/
  •  http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/os/i386/
  •  http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/x86_64/
  •  http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/i386/
  •  https://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/29/Everything/x86_64/os/
For RedHat (RHEL) and Oracle, their subscription managers add a little bit of complication, but the pattern is essentially the same.  One of the simplest approaches for RHEL is to:
  • use a subscribed node to run a reposync script against the desired repos,
  • cp the PXE boot/install images from a downloaded ISO (matching the ReleaseVersion/Arch), compare the ISO location of the boot images to their online repos and find the correct URL path/pattern for future use.
  • use a Kickstart ” %POST ” script for newly installed PXE/KS clients to join the subscription mgr.
To provide a local PXE/Kickstart for Fedora 29, refer to these steps as a starting point.
note: across the family of CentOS/Fedora/RHEL/Oracle… these boot/install images vary by release, version, iso-version, etc, etc… sometimes it is necessary to do a little reading, and try more than one file to find the ones that provide a successful PXE/Kickstart in your environment.
Download just the boot images. Then,using previous sections as a template, create a filtered yum config and a reposync script to get just the packages needed to install your desired config.

 

 

  • nano /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default   # add menu item(s) for booting Fedora.
  • nano /var/www/html/repos/f29.ks                   # make/edit kickstart file for Fedora install.

One thought on “Build a CentOS7 server for: pxe boot, kickstart, reposync, repotrack, nfs, https (SIDEBAR 1)”

  1. Pingback: Build a CentOS7 server for: pxe boot, kickstart, reposync, repotrack, nfs, https (summary of steps) – aitrusblog

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