Viktor Mihajlovski f3f16a7ca4 netboot: Scripts for building a PXE-style netboot image for KVM ...

A set of scripts and a short documentation describing how to build
a network boot image simulating a PXELINUX-style boot process.

Starting with QEMU 2.10 it is possible to boot a KVM guest over a
network interface using DHCP/BOOTP. The boot process is triggered by
the network boot firmware that is part of QEMU and follows the usual
network boot pattern: a DHCP request is issued by the client and
answered by a DHCP/BOOTP server. The DHCP reply will contain a
TFPT server identification and a bootfile name. The client will
retrieve the bootfile from the TFTP server, load it into memory
and IPL it.

A very common way of setting up a boot server has been defined
by PXELINUX, an open source implementation of PXE. With PXELINUX
the bootfile is a small network boot loader that will retrieve
a potentially client-specific configuration file containing
further instructions for the final boot process (kernel, ramdisk,...).

The set of sample scripts contained in the netboot directory provide
directions for a Linux distributor or a boot server administrator
on how to build a network boot image usable for a simplified
PXELINUX-style network boot setup for s390.

Note that the sample scripts are implementing only a subset of PXELINUX
functionality, specifically the config file parsing. In order to
get full functionality, a more specialized boot loader program
like petitboot or pxe-kexec must be used in the ramdisk.

Further, a sample Dockerfile is provided along with instructions on how
to build the network boot image in a Docker container.

Signed-off-by: Viktor Mihajlovski <mihajlov@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael Holzheu <holzheu@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

2017-08-31 17:41:15 +02:00

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