SmartOS zone that will serve up SmartOS
PXE Booting SmartOS from SmartOS zone
Motivation
We’ve bought a new Supermicro server - chassis and four blades. The provider installed Ubuntu on one of them, and from this I have already set up SmartOS on three other blades. As you know, host machine running on SmartOS boots from PXE server. But I don’t need a separate blade running on Linux, so to ensure safety I decided that each blade could be used as a loader for the rest of them. It was possible to deploy Linux on each host in KVM, but I found a better solution - to deploy PXE server in native SmartOS zone. Isn’t that wonderful when SmartOS can boot SmartOS?
Here's how to set up a simple PXE server in a SmartOS zone that will serve up SmartOS
imgadm update
imgadm import 8639203c-d515-11e3-9571-5bf3a74f354f
create pxe-server.json with following:
Zone Configuration
{
"alias": "pxe-server",
"hostname": "pxe-server",
"brand": "joyent",
"max_physical_memory": 64,
"quota": 2,
"image_uuid": "8639203c-d515-11e3-9571-5bf3a74f354f",
"resolvers": [
"8.8.8.8",
"8.8.4.4"],
"nics": [
{
"nic_tag": "admin",
"ip": "192.168.0.2",
"netmask": "255.255.255.0",
"gateway": "192.168.0.1",
"dhcp_server": "1"
}
]
}
vmadm create -f pxe-server.json
Setting up TFTP
Use zlogin to log into the zone:
zlogin
In the zone:
pkgin -y install tftp-hpa
mkdir /tftpboot
echo "tftp dgram udp wait root /opt/local/sbin/in.tftpd in.tftpd -s /tftpboot" > /tmp/tftp.inetd
svcadm enable inetd
inetconv -i /tmp/tftp.inetd -o /tmp
svccfg import /tmp/tftp-udp.xml
svcadm restart tftp/udp
Setting up DHCP (using Dnsmasq)
pkgin -y install dnsmasq
Edit /opt/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf
dhcp-range=192.168.0.200,192.168.0.220,2h
dhcp-match=set:gpxe,175
dhcp-boot=tag:!gpxe,undionly.kpxe
dhcp-boot=smartos.ipxe
dhcp-leasefile=/etc/dnsmasq.leases
svcadm enable dnsmasq
Setting up the tftpboot directory
Ben Rockwood provides a version of undionly.kpxe on his site. Run the following to get the PXE chainload binaries in place:
cd /tftpboot
curl http://cuddletech.com/IPXE-100612_undionly.kpxe > undionly.kpxe
At this point a generic PXE boot server is complete. iPXE will still expect smartos.ipxe, but that can be created with whatever content is needed. For those interested in booting SmartOS, what follows are the steps to provide SmartOS boot services on this server.
Providing SmartOS PXE Boot Services
A template iPXE config is useful both upfront and when updating to new platform releases. Create /tftpboot/smartos.ipxe.tpl with the following content (-B smartos=true is essential, otherwise logins will fail):
#!ipxe
# /var/lib/tftpboot/smartos.ipxe.tpl
kernel /smartos/$release/platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix -B smartos=true
initrd /smartos/$release/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
boot
cd /tftpboot
mkdir smartos
Deploy/Update to the latest SmartOS platform release
The steps in this section work for both initial deployment and upgrades as Joyent releases them.
Next get the latest SmartOS platform and massage it into a workable shape for our iPXE config:
cd /tftpboot/smartos
curl https://us-east.manta.joyent.com/Joyent_Dev/public/SmartOS/platform-latest.tgz > /var/tmp/platform-latest.tgz
(Just now URL https://download.joyent.com/pub/iso/platform-latest.tgz is invalid, 404… )
cat /var/tmp/platform-latest.tgz | tar xz
directory=`ls | grep platform- | sort | tail -n1`
release=${directory:9}
mv $directory $release
cd $release
mkdir platform
mv i86pc platform
cd /tftpboot
cat smartos.ipxe.tpl | sed -e"s/\$release/$release/g" > smartos.ipxe
Make sure PXE boot is enabled and that it is the first in the boot sequence.
Thanks
Thanks to Alain O'Dea for his notes about his experience in setting up Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS as a PXE server to boot SmartOS and big thanks to Ben Rockwood for creating and maintaining the PXE Booting SmartOS wiki page. Without their instructions I would not have done it.
Enjoy and stay tuned!
You can read the original post at kayama.dp.ua / SmartOS zone that will serve up SmartOS