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When Netbooting a Linux LPAR do we have something like pxelinux.0 for ppc64le or how to proceed ?

  • 1.  When Netbooting a Linux LPAR do we have something like pxelinux.0 for ppc64le or how to proceed ?

    Posted 2 days ago

    Hi all,

    I am trying to netboot a Linux LPAR through the HMC (GUI and later through the REST API).

    NIM server is not an option, so I have setup dnsmasq as a TFTP server on a Linux VM.

    In x86-land there's usually a pxelinux.0 file being downloaded over TFTP, which serves as a pre-boot environment, where you can point to a Linux kernel + initrd (over the network) and provide options (eg. a kickstart file or similar).

    How would I go about this with Power?  Would a netbooting LPAR download the kernel directly from TFTP or something like pxelinux ?  And how would I provide kernel options?

    I hope someone in this group had experience with this topic and can help me along :) 



    ------------------------------
    Best regards,
    Mark Nellemann
    Advisory Power Technical Specialist
    IBM
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: When Netbooting a Linux LPAR do we have something like pxelinux.0 for ppc64le or how to proceed ?

    Posted 21 hours ago

    Hi Mark,

    you need a DHCP/BOOTP server in your environment. In the DHCP server you define your future system like;

    host HOSTNAME { hardware ethernet 0x:00:0x:0x:0x:0x; fixed-address 10.0.0.256; filename "/boot/grub2/powerpc-ieee1275/core.elf"; }

    As you see, you need GRUB network installation files. On RHEL 9 it is package grub2-ppc64le-modules iirc.

    You point to your kernel/initrd/kickstart in the GRUB configuration files. The path to it depends on your server's configuration. You can use a single generic file or create specific file for your systems. See GRUB2 documentation for file naming conventions.

    Your grub.cfg file may look like:

    echo "Welcome to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 installer!"
echo ""

set timeout=60

menuentry 'Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9' --class fedora --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os --id rhel89 {
  linux (tftp,10.0.0.256)/rhel/8.9-ppc64le/vmlinuz ro ip=dhcp inst.repo=http://10.0.0.256/rhel/ppc64le/8.9/
  initrd (tftp,10.0.0.256)/rhel/8.9-ppc64le/initrd
}

    The possible boot options for the Linux kernel are specified in the RHEL documentation. You can also find the ways to specify the kickstart location and what need to be done to prepare kickstart file.



    ------------------------------
    Andrey Klyachkin

    https://www.power-devops.com
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


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