Re: [openstack-dev] [fuel] Advanced PXE provisioning notes

[Vladimir Eremin]

Hi Sean,

Yes, iPXE could be one-to-rule-them-all replacement, because of HTTP, IPv6 and 
UEFI support.

lpxelinux is good, but for one-line enhancements.

-- 
With best regards,
Vladimir Eremin,
Fuel Deployment Engineer,
Mirantis, Inc.



> On Nov 13, 2015, at 6:17 PM, Sean Collins  wrote:
> 
> Excellent info, thanks.
> 
> Do you think long term iPXE is the way to go? IPv6 support would be a big 
> motivation - but it sounds like it would take some work to accomplish.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Vladimir Eremin  > wrote:
> Forgot about tags, sorry.
> 
> --
> With best regards,
> Vladimir Eremin,
> Fuel Deployment Engineer,
> Mirantis, Inc.
> 
> 
> 
> > On Nov 13, 2015, at 5:13 PM, Vladimir Eremin  > > wrote:
> >
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > As you know, to speed up provisioning stage we could use HTTP for 
> > downloading kernel and initramfs. There are 3 options to do this: 
> > lpxelinux, iPXE (which is successor/fork of gPXE) and GRUB 2, which we were 
> > assessed during my work in Yandex and I’d like to share some experience.
> >
> > In this note I leave UEFI/iPXE embedding for IPv6 out of scope. Yandex has 
> > chosen with iPXE embedding mostly because it’s well-known already and there 
> > was less problem to embed iPXE to custom-build hardware than mess with UEFI.
> >
> > lpxelinux is a HTTP/FTP enabled variant of usual pxelinux (since syslinux 
> > 5.10), so it’s required no chainloading (so no mess with DHCP-server) and 
> > no boot config re-design. To provide HTTP URI instead of TFTP, two variants 
> > may be used:
> >
> > * replace entries in boot config like LINUX from relative path like 
> > boot/mykernel to absolute URL like http://boot-server/boot/mykernel 
> > 
> > * provide pxelinux.pathprefix DHCP option [1] contains URL prefix like 
> > http://boot-server/ 
> >
> > This is most convenient variant to speed up pxelinux setup. Unfortunately, 
> > lpxelinux hasn't built for Ubuntu Trusty, so it should be rebuilt from 
> > Debian Sid.
> >
> >
> > iPXE is advanced boot loader with many features like IPv6, HTTP and 
> > scripting language. Actually, it allows to pass hardware-related 
> > information to provisioning server.
> >
> > Boot script should be compiled into iPXE, or you will need to set up your 
> > DHCP-server [2] to serve different options for different loaders. This 
> > option will require to re-write provisioning logic.
> > It also support UEFI, so it could be used for IPv6 provisioning.
> >
> > I recommend this variant for advanced IPv6 + HTTP provisioning.
> >
> >
> > GRUB2 is most advanced option. Unfortunately, it’s still has a bug with 
> > IPv6 [3], so there is no point to overcomplicate the setup.
> >
> >
> > Note that UNDI API is provided correctly by most of modern NIC’s. However, 
> > some cards like Mellanox ConnectX and weird Intels is not working 
> > correctly. To fix it, iPXE could be built with vendor-specific driver [4]. 
> > There is no workaround for lpxelinux.
> >
> > [1] http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/PXELINUX#DHCP_options 
> > 
> > [2] http://ipxe.org/howto/chainloading 
> > [3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1229458 
> > 
> > [4] http://ipxe.org/appnote/hardware_drivers 
> > 
> >
> > --
> > With best regards,
> > Vladimir Eremin,
> > Fuel Deployment Engineer,
> > Mirantis, Inc.
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 

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Re: [openstack-dev] [fuel] Advanced PXE provisioning notes

[Sean M. Collins]

[sorry for the weirdness - this was cross-posted to two lists]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 11:30:53AM EST, Vladimir Eremin wrote:
> Hi Sean,
> 
> Yes, iPXE could be one-to-rule-them-all replacement, because of HTTP, IPv6 
> and UEFI support.
> 

OK - based on your research it sounds like iPXE would be a good
investment long term, just based on those three features. 

-- 
Sean M. Collins

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