t128-pxe-installer

Install SSR software over the network using ISO images.

Design Goals

• Simple - only a docker container with two daemons for DHCP/TFTP and HTTP
• Easy to adjust - one script that contains most of the logic entrypoint.sh
• Supports package based (PBU) and image based (IBU) SSR images

Topology

Setup

Preparation

git clone https://github.com/majes-git/t128-pxe-installer.git
cd t128-pxe-installer
echo BLASTING_INTERFACE=eth1 > .env

Run with Docker-compose

docker-compose up -d

Run with Docker

docker build -t t128-pxe-installer .
docker run -it -v ./iso:/iso --env-file .env --network host --privileged --rm t128-pxe-installer

ISO Image Selection

By default the entrypoint.sh script looks for the first .iso file in the mounted /iso volume of the docker container.

If there are more ISO images in the /iso directory, the source image can be specified in the ISO_IMAGE environment variable:

echo ISO_IMAGE=128T-6.2.5-5.r2.el7.OTP.v1.x86_64.iso >> .env

By default, the iso directoy in the project folder is used to mount it as the /iso volume to the container. This can be changed using the ISO_DIR variable in .env:

echo ISO_DIR=/mnt >> .env

After changing the .env file the docker container requires a restart:

docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d

Developer Notes

• The container uses Alpine Linux for a small footprint
• On top of it the daemons dnsmasq (for DHCP and TFTP = PXE) and gatling (a small and very fast webserver) is added
• The ISO image is loop mounted inside the container and an overlay for additional files is created
• Gatling runs on this overlayed, loop mounted iso folder
• For the legacy (kickstart based) PBU installer, the ks-otp.cfg is adjusted for HTTP netboot
• For the IBU installer the updates.img (which is automatically loaded by dracut) adds a script to the LiveOS installer. This script fetches the image and installation scripts (*.ibu-v1.tar, install.sh and unpacker.sh):

$ unsquashfs -l /srv/www/iso/images/updates.img
squashfs-root
squashfs-root/download_installer.sh
squashfs-root/etc
squashfs-root/etc/systemd
squashfs-root/etc/systemd/system
squashfs-root/etc/systemd/system/anaconda.service.d
squashfs-root/etc/systemd/system/anaconda.service.d/override.conf

Changes

2024-07-24

• Added support for UEFI