@sebastian-roth

I am pxe booting ubuntu 20.04, kernel and initramfs are extracted from the iso (ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso)
and my menu code is as follows:

kernel http://$FOG-IP/os/test/casper/vmlinuz
initrd http://$FOG-IP/os/test/casper/initrd
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=1800000 ip=dhcp url=http://FOG-IP/os/20.04/ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso net.ifnames=0 autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=http://FOG-IP/os/20.04/ ro
boot || goto MENU

This works without fail on my other devices.

Hi There,

I have a Dell Precision 5750 that I’m trying to UEFI pxe boot - I can boot to the fog menu, select my ipxe menu item (which is a netboot for ubuntu) It loads that kernel and initrd fine and starts to try and wget the iso from my server, I can see busybox and initramfs messages “No Broadcast interfaces found - exiting” this repeats and then it’ll try to wget the iso from my server to which it says wget can’t connect to remote host, network unreachable. Attaching a picture

I have no issues pxe booting other devices, just this model. I assumed it was some bios changes I need to make, which I believe I’ve changed everything I can and would need to, It almost seems like it just doesn’t see my nic. Has anyone run into this issue before?

Thanks!

@george1421
So it would look like the following?

kernel http://{fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/vmlinuz
initrd http://{fog-ip}]/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/initrd

and as long as directory above is in /var/www (ubuntu server here) it will work? Or, do I need to have kernel and initrd actually in root dir of /var/www not in sub directories? And you’re right tftp transfer is fast if I’m on the same site, we have some machines that need to image from a remote site which do not have a local fog node.

Hi there, I’m curious if I can use http instead of tftp in my ipxe menu settings, here is an example of what one menu item looks like

kernel tftp://{fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://{fog-ip}]/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/initrd
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=1800000 ip=dhcp url=http://{fog-ip}/os/20.04/ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso net.ifnames=0 autoinstall ds=nocloud-net;s=http://{fog-ip}/os/20.04/server/ ro
boot || goto MENU

Am I able to use http in place of tftp? TFTP is just painfully slow. Thanks in advance!

@george1421 I’m using fog to netboot and run an autoinstall ubuntu 20.04(there may be better tools for this, but FOG is what we use, so I was trying to leverage it). But I actually found out a way to use selenium to screen scrape and use a hotkey to select the ipxe menu item to launch and essentially everything relatively autonomously. Reason for this is so a tech can ran a python script to configure a new server for that location and not have to manually do really anything other than plug it in.

Hi There,

I’m looking to automate PXE installs on headless servers in a datacenter. But I am not sure how I can automate selecting the image in the list - I am using ipxe menus and not a static captured image

Is there a way I can drop to a pxe shell via keystrokes to then chainload the server + proper image? Maybe I’m asking for too much…

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

@pacman366 This is great, thank you! I had some other projects to work on, so I hadn’t touched this in a while. Where did you get your vmlinuz and initrd files from? Did you extract from the iso?

@pacman366 this is pretty similar to how I’ve gotten it to “work” Have you tried setting up the autoinstall method? I just started to attempt this today, and no luck so far.

@george1421 said in 20.04 autoinstall:

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10944/using-fog-to-pxe-boot-into-your-favorite-installer-images/2?_=1594759012162

I wonder if it will be different though, maybe not initially, but soon. See below:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/ points to a legacy version. And if you click it, you go here: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/ to which it mentions this will no longer be supported in the future and mentions the new version stating: now supports all Server hardware platforms, unattended autoinstall, offline installation, network-gapped install, PXE and HTTP boot, RAID, LVM, LUKS, among other things.

Has anyone gotten a subset of this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1235723/automated-20-04-server-installation-using-pxe-and-live-server-image working with FOG yet? I’m currently only trying to tackle making it liveboot. I haven’t tested an autoinstall yet, since that is new to me with 20.04, I’m used to preseeds.

I get as far as an initramfs shell telling me “Unable to find a live file system on the network”

my initial parameters:
kernel tftp:///${fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/vmlinuz
initrd tftp:///${fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/initrd
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs boot=casper netboot=nfs nfsroot=/${fog-ip}:/images/os/ubuntu/20.04/ locale=en_US.UTF-8 quiet splash ip=dhcp rw
boot || goto MENU

any help is greatly appreciated!

Edit:
I updated my paramaters to closely match what was listed in the above link and got it to work to boot to a live disk.

kernel tftp://${fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/vmlinuz
initrd tftp://${fog-ip}/os/ubuntu/20.04/casper/initrd
imgargs vmlinuz initrd=initrd ip=dhcp url=http://${fog-ip}/os/20.04/ubuntu-20.04-live-server-amd64.iso locale=en_US.UTF-8 quiet splash ip=dhcp rw
boot || goto MENU