pxeserver - The LCFG pxeserver component
This is an LCFG component to manage the configuration of a PXE server.
PXELINUX is a SYSLINUX derivative, for booting Linux off a network server, using a network ROM conforming to the Intel PXE (Pre-Execution Environment) specification. PXELINUX is not a program that is intended to be flashed or burned into a PROM on the network card.
For full details on syslinux see http://syslinux.zytor.com/
This is a string which will be displayed as a title on the PXE boot screen. There is no default value.
This is the PXE boot option which will be selected by default if there are no entry-specific override. You probably want this to be something generic like "reboot" or "localboot", the default value is "localboot". Note that the localboot option (i.e. from the current MBR) does not always work due to BIOS issues.
This is the PXE timeout which will be used if there is no entry-specific override. This is an integer which is in units of tenths of a second, the default is 100 which is 10 seconds. A timeout of zero will disable the timeout completely.
This is a boolean value which controls whether or not to present a prompt to the user, the default value is true. This value is used if there is no entry-specific override. Note that this option has no effect for configurations which do NOT have a serial console. They use a "fancy" menu style which conflicts with this option.
This is a boolean value which controls whether the user can modify boot options on the command line. This value is used if there is no entry-specific override. The default value is true (i.e. a user can edit the boot options).
This is a boolean value which controls whether to ignore the PXE Shift/Alt/Caps Lock/Scroll Lock escapes. Using this makes it possible to enforce booting from the default option. This value is used if there is no entry-specific override. The default value is false (i.e. allow the various escapes).
This is a boolean value which controls whether or not to send output to the normal video console. Some BIOSes try to forward this to the serial console and sometimes make a total mess thereof, so this option lets you disable the video console on these systems. This value is used if there is no entry-specific override. The default value is true (i.e. send output to the video console).
This is a password which you require to be entered to boot from the platform labels. By default there is no password and anyone can boot from any PXE option. The password can either be a simple non-encrypted string or encrypted with SHA1, syslinux provides the sha1pass command to help generate the encrypted password. The password is not applied to the standard "reboot" and "localboot" options.
This is the location of the base directory for the tftp server. The default value is /tftpdir, this should not normally need to be changed.
This is the list of PXE boot options which are available. You do not need to add "reboot" and "localboot" to this list as they are added as part of the standard templates used to create the configuration files.
Note that the inclusion of a particular platform in this list does not mean it will automatically appear in every configuration file. For a platform to appear in a configuration file it must appear in the relevant pxeserver.platforms_entry resource (see below for details).
This is a short title which will be displayed for the boot option, if this is not specified the label will be used instead. Normally you do not need to set this, it is mainly for when you want the title to include a character which is not valid in an LCFG tag-list identifier.
This is a string which describes the boot option.
This is the kernel image to be used for this boot option.
This is the initrd to be used for this boot option.
Normally PXE works out the file type of the boot image from the name. It is however possible to force the image to be booted as a particular if your filename does not conform to this scheme. The currently supported options are: linux, boot, bss, pxe, fdimage, comboot, com32, config. No validation is done on the value of this resource, if a string is specified then it will will appear in the PXE configuration instead of the KERNEL directive.
This is a list of extra options which should be passed into the kernel at boot-time for this boot option.
This is an LCFG tag-list of entries for which PXE configuration files should be generated. The list can be populated directly by adding new entries to the list and also through the LCFG pxeclient component. Any profile using the pxeclient component will have the relevant information automatically inserted into this list via an LCFG spanning map. A typical scenario has entries for whole subnets specified directly via the pxeserver.entries resource and entries for individual hosts created via pxeclient spanning map.
This is the identifier which will be used for the name of the PXE configuration file. The filename can be based on either the MAC address for the network card or the IP address. PXE supports the option of a single file being used for a whole subnet so this IP address can be something like 192.168, 192.168.1 or 192.168.1.2
This is a string containing the name of the host, it is not required for the PXE configuration. It is mainly available in case you want to use it in a template so that a boot-screen shows the hostname.
This is a list of the platforms which you want to be made available in the PXE boot menu for this machine. Typically you want to set this to the value in the sysinfo.os_id% resource. Any strings in this resource which are not present in the pxeserver.labels resource will be ignored, a warning will appear in the pxeserver component logfile.
A boolean value which indicates whether the platform supports (or needs) a separate serial console entry in the generated platforms list. The default is true.
If you want the kernel to have a serial console you must specify the port (e.g. ttyS0). Turning on serial console support has a couple of implications, you will get two entries for each platform (one with a serial console and one without), you will also not get a "fancy" menu style as that does not work well over a serial console.
This allows you to control the baud-rate of the serial console. The default value is 9660 which is safe but rather slow.
This overrides the value in the standard timeout resource, see the details above for full information.
This overrides the value in the standard prompt resource, see the details above for full information.
This overrides the value in the standard allowoptions resource, see the details above for full information.
This overrides the value in the standard default_label resource, see the details above for full information.
This overrides the value in the standard console resource, see the details above for full information.
This overrides the value in the standard noescape resource, see the details above for full information.
This is a boolean value which controls whether the options in the PXE boot menu will be password protected. Note that the pxeserver.password resource MUST also be set or the menu will NOT be protected. For reasons of backwards compatibility, the default value is true.
By default there is only one pxe spanning map to which all clients publish and servers subscribe. It is possible to have multiple maps, with each being for a different subnet, for example, which on a large network might be much more efficient. The default for this resource is pxe/all.
This is the name of the template to use for generating a PXE configuration file for an entry which does NOT require serial console support. The default is pxe_conf2.tt. It must be the name of a file which is found in the /usr/lib/lcfg/conf/pxeserver directory.
This is the name of the template to use for generating a PXE configuration file for an entry which DOES require serial console support. The default is to be the same as the value for the tmpl_conf resource. It must be the name of a file which is found in the /usr/lib/lcfg/conf/pxeserver directory.
This module uses LCFG::Component and LCFG::Template.
lcfg-pxeclient(8)
Full documentation of the various PXE options is available at the Syslinux Project website: http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/The_Syslinux_Project
This is the list of platforms on which we have tested this software. We expect this software to work on any Unix-like platform.
ScientificLinux5, ScientificLinux6
Stephen Quinney <squinney@inf.ed.ac.uk>
Copyright (C) 2008-2009 University of Edinburgh. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GPL, version 2 or later.