a Yumi-like PXE server based on OMV

hi everyone

I thought I would share with you what I am hoping to do with OMV.

My vision is to provide a PXE base that makes it as easy to boot an iso image over the LAN as Yumi makes it to load an iso onto a USB stick.

The end user will be a refurbisher of PCs. He buys machines from the Vista vintage and cleans them, boosts the memory and hard disk size, and sells them on. He is one of many people running small single person businesses doing so,

He is currently thinking of buying in a commercially produced NAS box, that does not offer PXE booting. This would improve his productivity because he intends to boot a machine using the Acronis DVD and then install a disk image from the NAS box. At present he has the images duplicated on two USB drives, and so can only install software on two boxes at a time. He correctly says that if it is on a NAS box, he can do many at one. His plan was to still boot the machines up from DVD.

I said to him that either FreeNAS or OMV could do all of that.

First advice was whatever your budget is the NAS is, spend it all on hard drives. You would be well advised to use enterprise or better drives rather than consumer grade ones. For the server itself use any of the PCs that come in and cannot be sold on for cosmetic reasons.

Second piece of advice was OMV rather than FreeNAS simply because I know Debian well, so if he wants my support I am happy to offer support on the OMV, I am sure BSD is great, but I choose not to climb that learning curve.

Third thing I said is that I would look at getting PXE booting going on the OMV.

Ideally he wants to be able to boot into the following over the LAN, in this order of priorities (his priorities, not my personal ones)

- Acronis DVD
- Windows PE environment
- Memtest / Memtest86 / Memtest86+
- The Hardware Detection Tool
- Various Linux distros

In addition, once booted, he wants to be able to serve the following to the client

- the contents of a Win 7 or Win X DVD (to run a fresh install) - this needs Samba and may also need some prep work in AIK

- the contents of a Linux install disk - this needs NFS as Samba screws up Unix file perms

- the directory holding his Acronis images - probable served via Samba, maybe NFS, but let's offer both

All of that can be done in OMV, apart from the vital step of DHCP serving the PXE related info in early boot.

So my intention at present is to get this running for him by adding a suitable DHCP daemon, configured as a proxy DHCP server, to OMV at the "below decks" level. Sorry if that offends, but I want to get it working for him rather than doing a more professional job and doing it as a plugin.

I would be glad of anyone's comments about any of the above.

And I have some specific questions to one person, too:

@ryecoaaron

I notice you are developing a PXE plugin. Will this include an optional DHCP server, and if so will it give the user the choice to run as a full DHCP (ie replacing th existing server) and alternatively as a proxy (ie augmenting a DHCP service which will remain in place).

I am wondering what timescale is for the PXE plugin to be ready (or at least beta ready) for OMV 3? If you can save me some of the work I will use it. If not I will wirte it myself, but maybe not as a plugin (as I do not know what writing a plugin involves)

Also do PM me if you might be interested in some assistance with that plugin (on the understanding that at present my personal priority will be to get something that works as a one-off rather than as a plug-in).

Season's Greetings
River~~

Zitat von ryecoaaron

No. While I do maintain the dnsmasq plugin (not quite ready on OMV 3.x), I believe the router should do dhcp. Plus I would use a router (I use pfsense) that can specify a pxe server.

hi

in principle I would agree with you.

In practice, this use case involves a guy working in a unit in an enterprise centre where his landlord provides a router with DHCP covering both wifi and ethernet. This comes free -- ie is included in the rent for his unit. We can't really change that. So our options are

1. running proxy DHCP to augment the landlord's DHCP
2. buying an extra router to put in series with the landlord's one
3. putting OMV between the landlords router and the switch, and configuring OMV to do all the DHCP for his wired network
4. disabling the DHCP in the landlord's router and doing it all from DHCP in OMV

Option 3 makes it harder to access the OMV box from his laptop which connects by wifi.
So might option 2, depending what router we bought, but the real issue with option 2 is with that word "bought". We are hoping not to buy hardware.

Option 4 involves making it harder for him to get problems resolved if the "pirate" router is blamed for connection issues. There have been many of these recently, and we prefer not to give the landlord's contractors an alibi for avoiding sorting out the next internet connectivity issue. While we do not interfere with the provided setup so that the landlord and his contractors are clearly responsible for sorting out failures up to and including that router.

And this is exactly the reason proxy DCHP exists, to cover the cases where (for whatever reason) you do not have access to the DHCP server that provides network settings.

Question: where can I read more about the PXE plugin? I can't now remember where I saw it and for some reason when I did look I got the impression it was a work in progress so did not bookmark it.

R~~

Zitat von ryecoaaron

Yep, I know exactly why it exists. I just don't like it.

You don't have to disable DHCP. It would only need the tftp server set (if the router is a decent router).

Most of the time when I read this, it means more work for me (ie plugin changes).

I don't like proxy DHCP either, so we share that opinion.

The router isn't a decent one -- no facility to set fields we need for PXE, it only knows about one gateway, not even a facility to set routes for gateways off its subnet onto others on our LAN.

In this case, I am not asking *you* to do the work: I will use the plugin if it works for what we want, if not I will hack together a one-off solution. I very much go for the RMS ethic that you copy what you can, but if you need extra you write it yourself. (I don't agree with everything he says, mind, but on that he got it exactly right)