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Foreman Discovery Image

This is a small redhat-based image that boots via PXE into memory, initializes all network interfaces using NetworkManager and spawns small script called "discovery-register" via systemd. This script determines foreman URL either via DNS SRV or via kernel command line and uploads facts via Foreman Discovery plugin API.

The image has foreman-proxy installed with BMC API configured to "shell" provider. Upon request of Foreman, it reboots the node via /usr/bin/reboot command. To initiate the restart, use the following command:

curl -3 -H "Accept:application/json" -H "Content-Length:0" -k -X PUT \
  http://192.168.100.100:8443/bmc/ignored/chassis/power/cycle

Usage

This README describes bare minimum steps to PXE-boot discovery image. The full installation and setup is described on the foreman_discovery plugin site: http://theforeman.org/plugins/foreman_discovery/

To extract the tarball into the correct directory you can use this command:

wget http://downloads.theforeman.org/discovery/releases/X.X/fdi-image-X.X.X.tar \
  -O - | tar x --overwrite -C /var/lib/tftpboot/boot

Integrate it via the PXELinux templates in the Foreman application.

LABEL discovery
MENU LABEL Foreman Discovery Image
MENU DEFAULT
KERNEL boot/fdi-image/vmlinuz0
APPEND initrd=boot/fdi-image/initrd0.img rootflags=loop root=live:/fdi.iso rootfstype=auto ro rd.live.image rd.debug=1 acpi=force rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.bootif=0 rd.neednet=0 nomodeset proxy.url=http://YOURPROXY proxy.type=proxy
IPAPPEND 2

Make sure the APPEND statement is on single line.

You can also use the image standalone (without TFTP under Foreman's control). In this case, edit your pxelinux.cfg/default file directly and make sure the foreman.url points correctly.

Networking

By default the instance only initializes default interface (the one it was booted from) via DHCP. If you want to initialize all network interfaces, provide fdi.initnet=all option on the kernel command line. Peer DNS and routes are always acquired only from the primary interface and ignored for secondary (PEERDNS, PEERROUTES, DEFROUTE). Network cards connected to same networks can cause troubles due to ARP filtering.

IPv4 and IPv6 are supported.

Documentation

Discovery image has many features and configuration options. For more, visit http://theforeman.org/plugins/foreman_discovery/

Building

FDI currently builds only against CentOS 7. There is a tutorial on how to build against CentOS 8.

A host with either Fedora or CentOS 7 is required. RHEL 7 cannot be used as it is missing core dependency (livecd-tools), but this can be workarounded by installing it from CentOS 7 repositories (and two dependencies). Grub2 EFI and Shim packages are only required if the resulting ISO must boot on UEFI systems.

Install the required packages:

$ sudo yum install livecd-tools pykickstart isomd5sum syslinux \
  grub2-efi shim grub2-efi-x64 grub2-efi-x64-cdboot shim-x64

On older versions of Fedora or RHEL 7.0-7.3 shim and grub packages has no x64 suffix, the command above will install one of the two.

To prepare CentOS 7 kickstart do:

$ ./build-livecd fdi-centos7.ks

To prepare Fedora 19 kickstart do:

$ ./build-livecd fdi-fedora19.ks

To build the image (make sure you have at least 3 GB free space in /tmp):

$ sudo ./build-livecd-root

It's also possible to build the image inside of a docker container. This is especially useful if you don't have immediate access to a Fedora or CentOS 7 system. You can build the docker container using the Dockerfile in this repo:

docker build -t fdi - < Dockerfile.centos

You then need only to run the final build-livecd-root command inside the docker container:

$ docker run --privileged=true -v $PWD:/home -tie /bin/bash fdi
# cd foreman-discovery-image
# ./build-livecd-root

Regardless of how you built the image (docker or not), the next step is to copy the resulting tarball to the TFTP boot directory:

$ tar xvf fdi-image-*.tar -C /var/lib/tftpboot/boot

And visit https://github.com/theforeman/foreman_discovery for more information about how to configure Foreman and how to use the plugin.

The image is built in /tmp directory because in most modern distributions this is mapped to memory. This is intentional, so make sure you have enough RAM or you can experience some swapping. Alternatively, change the temp directory in the scripts.

It is possible to modify SYSLINUX kernel command line by changing livecd-creator code in /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/imgcreate/live.py file. This workarounds missing input options for additional kernel command line elements and can be used for testing the ISO with special kernel command line options multiple times.

Building a release

This chapter is for The Foreman team members, skip to the next section if this is not for you.

To build new release, use our Jenkins CI job:

http://ci.theforeman.org/job/foreman-discovery-image-publish/

The job uses Vagrant to spin VM in OpenStack/Rackspace and then copies the result to our downloads.theforeman.org site.

It is possible to start the job locally in libvirt:

	cd aux/vagrant-build
	distro=f24
	LC_ALL=C repoowner=theforeman branch=master proxy_repo=1.18 vagrant up $distro

Wait until the box starts up and builds the image, then connect to the box and download the image:

	vagrant ssh-config $distro | tee vagrant-ssh-config.tmp
	mkdir tmp
	scp -F vagrant-ssh-config.tmp $distro:foreman-discovery-image/fdi*tar tmp/
	scp -F vagrant-ssh-config.tmp $distro:foreman-discovery-image/fdi-bootable*iso tmp/

And finally (do not forget):

	LC_ALL=C repoowner=theforeman branch=master proxy_repo=1.18 vagrant destroy $distro

Extensions

Discovery Image supports runtime extensions published via TFTP or HTTP. Those are distributed as ZIP files with shell scripts. It is also possible to build an image with extensions built-in which is helpful for PXE-less environments.

To do that, follow the documentation to create directory structure in root/opt/extension folder. Do not put ZIP files into this folder, but keep the directory structure extracted (this is the directory where ZIP files get downloaded and extracted). Then rebuild the image, the extensions will be started during boot.

Additional facts

Some extra facts are reported in addition to the standard ones reported by Facter:

source /etc/default/discovery
export FACTERLIB
facter | grep discovery
discovery_bootif => 52:54:00:94:9e:52

discovery_bootif - MAC of the interface it was booted from

Troubleshooting

First of all make sure your server (or VM) has more than 500 MB of memory because less memory can lead to various random kernel panic errors as the image needs to be extracted in-place (150 MB * 2).

The first virtual console is reserved for logs, all systemd logging is shown there. Particulary useful system logs are tagged with:

  • discovery-register - initial facts upload
  • foreman-discovery - facts refresh, reboot remote commands
  • nm-prepare - boot script which pre-configures NetworkManager
  • NetworkManager - networking information

The root account and ssh access are disabled by default, but you can enable ssh and set root password using the following kernel command line options:

fdi.ssh=1 fdi.rootpw=redhat

Root password can also be specified in encrypted form (using 'redhat' as an example below). Single and/or double quotes around password are recommended to be used to prevent possible special characters interpretation.

fdi.rootpw='$1$_redhat_$i3.3Eg7ko/Peu/7Q/1.wJ/'

You can use tty2 console (or higher) to login as well.

To debug booting issues when the system is terminated in early stage of boot, use systemd.confirm_spawn=true options to interactively start one service after another. Anothe option rd.debug=1 option makes sure shell will be spawned on fatal Dracut errors.

If the system is halted immediately during boot sequence, this can be caused by corrupt image. Check the downloaded image using sha256sum. If the problem persist, make sure rd.live.check kernel option is NOT present. Beware that this looks like there are transmission errors of the init RAM disk and you may have unexpected behavior. PXE is unreliable protocol, server and TFTP must be on the same LAN.

Downstream

This repostirory is downstream friendly for koji. The generated fdi-image.ks kickstart file is self-containing. First of all, run the initial script and provide empty base kickstart without any repositories (they will be added via koji:

$ ./build-livecd fdi-empty.ks

Then simply build the image from kickstart called fdi-image.ks:

koji spin-livecd \
  fdi-image-rhel_7_0 \
  $(cat root/usr/share/fdi/VERSION) \
  --release $(cat root/usr/share/fdi/RELEASE) \
  --repo=http://my.repo/1 \
  --scratch \
  my-tag-image
  x86_64 \
  fdi-image.ks

Then extract the kernel and initial RAM disk:

mv fdi-image-rhel_7_0-1.9.90-20141022.1.iso fdi.iso
livecd-iso-to-pxeboot fdi.iso

Contributing

Please follow our (generic contributing guidelines for Foreman)[http://theforeman.org/contribute.html#SubmitPatches]. Make sure you create (an issue)[http://projects.theforeman.org/projects/discovery/issues/new] and select "Image" Category.

vim:tw=75

License

The kickstart file, utility scripts and other software in this repo is licensed under GNU GPL v2 or later. Exceptions are individually commented in file headers.

Generated image is covered by additional licenses, refer to Fedora and CentOS licensing information.

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