Introduction

This will guide you through running an Ubuntu server as PXE install server. You'll need to run a DHCP server on your network, not necessarily this server but you do need one. Some of the packages we'll install come from universe, so make sure you have it listed as a repository.

This document is work in progress, I'm typing it as I do this myself.

Installing needed packages

You'll need to install a few packages

sudo apt-get install netkit-inetd tftpd-hpa

If this is also going to be your DHCP server, install DHCPD

sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

Configure dhcpd

If your pxe server is also your dhcp server, you'll need something like this in /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        range 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.200;
        filename "/tftpboot/pxelinux.0";
}

If you have an existing dhcp server, you should point it to your pxe server by doing something like the following

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    <other config here>
    filename "pxelinux.0"
    next-server <pxe host>;
}

Configure tftpd-hpa

tftpd-hpa is called from inetd. The options passed to tftpd-hpa when it starts are thus found in /etc/inetd.conf

Change the path at the end to point to /tftpboot, your /etc/inetd.conf should then look like this

tftp    dgram   udp    wait    root    /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /tftpboot

Create the tftpboot directory and copy the needed files from the Ubuntu CD

sudo mkdir /tftpboot
sudo cp -r /media/cdrom/install/netboot/* /tftpboot/

If your dhcp server issues correct network info and your pxe clients will have network access, then at this point you will be able to do an Ubuntu install using internet repositories.

I want to go a little further however and install everything from the install server as well as customise some of the packages to install.

Install apache

Currently nfs installs aren't well supported (Please correct me if I'm wrong) so we'll install over http. For that we need a webserver on our install server too.

sudo apt-get install apache

Copying Ubuntu files

Create an ubuntu directory under your freshly installed apache's document root and copy all of the contents of the Ubuntu CD to that directory

mkdir /var/www/html/ubuntu
cp -r /media/cdrom/* /var/www/html/ubuntu/

Customising the install

There is a package called system-config-kickstart which is a GUI frontend to creating kickstart files. The kickstart file tells the installer where to get it's packages from, what to install and a number of other useful settings. See KickstartCompatibility for more info.

This package does not have to be installed on your install server, it can be on a convenient Ubuntu desktop somewhere.

Create a custom ks.cfg with system-config-kickstart, be sure to specify HTTP under "Installation Method". Provide the IP of you install server and make the HTTP Director /ubuntu/ Save the file and copy it to your install server under /var/www/html/

Use your ks.cfg

In order for your network Ubuntu install to use your kickstart file, you have to tell it where to find it. Edit /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default and add "ks=http://<installserver>/ks.cfg" to the append line. It should then look something like this

label linux
        kernel ubuntu-installer/i386/linux
        append ks=http://192.168.0.1/ks.cfg vga=normal initrd=ubuntu-installer/i386/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=16432 root=/dev/rd/0 rw  --
label expert

Boot and install

You should now be able to boot another pc on the lan over the network and have it install Ubuntu automagically