0

Coming from a legacy boot background, I used to be able to provide server-specific kickstart/boot configs based on the MAC address by creating a /pxelinux.cfg/01-MAC-Address file. I am trying to do something similar with UEFI boot and can't work out how to get a server to use it's specific configuration (i.e. a particular ISO or user-data file as specified in grub.cfg).

I have set up a PXE/TFTP/Apache server, largely following the instructions at this excellent post: https://askubuntu.com/a/1235724/1094816.

It's all working fine, and systems pick up the grub.cfg file as expected. However, when I use a system-specific grub file (e.g., /tfpt/grub/grub.cfg-01-ec-eb-b8-92-44-70) it is ignored. Although this is in the Grub docs, looking at many of the docs where I've seen this, I'm wondering if it's a Fedora-and-derivatives-only option based on the grubx64.efi packaged with them? And if so, what is the method for achieving this with Ubuntu+UEFI?

My current setup:

I am running dnsmasq, tftp and apache2 on Ubuntu 20.04. I am trying to autoinstall an Ubuntu 20.04 server.

Directory structure:

/tftp/
/tftp/grub/grubx64.efi
/tftp/grub/grub.cfg-01-ec-eb-b8-92-44-70
/tftp/grub/grub.cfg
/tftp/initrd
/tftp/pxelinux.0
/tftp/vmlinuz

Contents of /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

interface=enp1s0,lo
bind-interfaces
domain=poseidon.lab
dhcp-range=10.50.129.100,10.50.129.200,255.255.255.0,2h
dhcp-option=3,10.50.129.1
dhcp-option=6,10.50.128.20
server=10.50.128.20
dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/tftp
dhcp-mac=set:efi-x86_64,ec:eb:b8:92:44:70
dhcp-boot=tag:efi-x86_64,grub/grubx64.efi

Contents of grub.cfg-01-MAC-ADDRESS:

set default=auto
set timeout=10

menuentry 'Ubuntu 20.04' --id=auto {
        linux /vmlinuz ip=dhcp url=http://${pxe_default_server}/tftp/ubuntu-20.04-live-server-amd64.iso quiet autoinstall ds=nocloud-net\;s=http://${pxe_default_server}/tftp/01-mac-address/ root=/dev/ram0 cloud-config-url=/dev/null
        initrd /initrd
}
Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

Might not be the best answer, but I managed to solve this by doing the following in the default grub.cfg (thanks to Andrew's answer here: https://askubuntu.com/a/1272415/1094816):

set default=auto
set timeout=10

menuentry 'Ubuntu 20.04 - autoinstall' --id=auto {
        linux /vmlinuz ip=dhcp url=http://${pxe_default_server}/tftp/ubuntu-20.04-live-server-amd64.iso quiet autoinstall ds=nocloud-net\;s=http://${pxe_default_server}/tftp/01-${net_default_mac}/ root=/dev/ram0 cloud-config-url=/dev/null
        initrd /initrd
}

And maintaining a meta-data and user-data file for each server in a separate directory for each host:

/tftp/
/tftp/01-aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:00/meta-data
/tftp/01-aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:00/user-data

So when server with MAC aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:00 boots, it will download those files to configure the server. Seems to work so far.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .