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HowTo: Setup your own PXE Boot Server using Ubuntu Server

The Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) provides a means of starting up a PC using a network adapter instead of
the traditional method of hard-drive, USB flash stick, CD or floppy disk.

Why would you want to boot a PC from the network? Well, it opens the door to booting diskless workstations, eg:
Internet Cafe PCs, or if you regularly install tens or hundreds of PCs, you can start the installer on all those

machines at once without needing to have individual boot/install media for each machine. You can even use Linux
PXE for starting Microsoft Windows network installers and tools.

This article is going to show you how to setup a standard Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Server (will also work with

Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04) to respond to a PXE boot request and present a boot menu ONLY. I will put practical

applications such as installing Ubuntu over the network or booting a Live CD over the network into separate future
articles.

Pre-requisites:
A PC or virtual machine with an installation of Ubuntu Server on it. This tutorial was written using an Ubuntu

Lucid 10.04 Server, but these instructions will work equally well on nearly any version of Ubuntu Server (tested

and working on Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04). This tutorial will not detail the initial build of a server as it is relatively
straight forward.

A DHCP server that allows you to specific PXE boot information. Most consumer routers will not give you these

options. Suitable DHCP servers are the DHCP daemon on Ubuntu Server, third-party Linux router solutions such
as Smoothwall or pfSense, and Windows Server among others.

If your DHCP server is a dedicated network/firewall device that you do not wish to use as a file server to serve the
network boot files, then you will need a separate PC to be a file server as well.

Some free disk space. PXE booting take bugger-all space, but whatever you plan to serve from it will need space.

If you plan to setup the Ubuntu Live CD to be bootable from PXE, you will need 700MB+ of hard-drive space on

that server. You will need more than this if you wish to host things like multiple LiveCDs such as both the 32-bit
and 64-bit versions, or multiple different distributions.

A PC workstation that has PXE boot capability. Any PC built in the last 10 years should definitely have this

capability, though you may be required to enable it in BIOS. If you do not have a PC that can do this, you can use
a virtual machine such as Virtualbox instead (you could have a virtual machine PXE boot off a virtual PXE boot
server too!

).

A copy of Ubuntu Server 10.04 that suits your servers architecture.

A copy of the Ubuntu ALTERNATE Install CD 10.04 that we need to get some PXE boot files from. Unfortunately
the Live CD does NOT contain the files we need.

At the end of this exercise we will have a PXE server that will boot into a selection menu that will give us choices of
things to do. Were also going to pretty up the menu with a background image instead of just having plain boring

text, and well do this using some of the existing elements on the Ubuntu CD as most of the work has been done for
you already!

Getting it together:
1. Login to your server.
.

2. Lets install the software we need:

$ sudo apt-get install tftpd-hpa inetutils-inetd

this will install a Trivial FTP server which is essentially a super-simple FTP server plus the inetd daemon which
will listen out for TFTP requests and direct them to the TFTP daemon.Before you ask, no you cannot use a

regular FTP daemon like vsftpd or similar. It has to be a TFTP daemon. Beware: Ubuntu has two TFTP options in
the repository you must use the HPA version of the daemon as shown, as it handles large boot images while the
other daemon does not. If you dont use it, you will see boot errors.

3. By default Ubuntu sets up the TFTP daemons root directory to be /var/lib/tftpboot which may not suit your

requirements. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be changing this to /srv/tftp instead. To do this, we need
to edit the /etc/inetd.conf file in a text editor:
$ sudo nano /etc/inetd.conf

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the file and modify the tftp line (or add it if its missing) and substitute
/var/lib/tftpboot bit on the end of that line with the path to your preferred directory:
tftp

dgram

udp

wait

root

/usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /srv/tftp

5. Save your changes by pressing CTRL+X and then Y and then Enter.
.

6. Now we need to tell the Trivial FTP daemon where our TFTP root is. Open its config file with:
$ sudo nano /etc/default/tftpd-hpa

7. Modify the TFTP_DIRECTORY line (usually the fourth line from the top) to be /srv/tftp:

# /etc/default/tftpd-hpa
TFTP_USERNAME="tftp"
TFTP_DIRECTORY="/srv/tftp"
TFTP_ADDRESS="0.0.0.0:69"
TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure"

8. Save your changes by pressing CTRL+X and then Y and then Enter.
.

9. Now we just need to restart the inetd and tftp services with:
$ sudo service inetutils-inetd restart
$ sudo service tftpd-hpa restart

10. So thats the TFTP daemon ready to serve files to a PXE agent. Now we need to create the directory where we will
be putting all our PXE goodness into:
$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/tftp

11. We now need to copy some files off the Ubuntu Alternate Install CD that make up the PXE boot files and the
menu config files. I will use the 32-bit disc in this example, though the files are the same on the 64-bit disc for

this step. Insert the CD or mount the downloaded Ubuntu Alternate Install CD ISO. In this case I will assume
you have a physical CD mounted at /media/cdrom.
$
$
$
$
$

sudo cp /media/cdrom/install/netboot/pxelinux.0 /srv/tftp

sudo mkdir -p /srv/tftp/ubuntu-installer/i386
cd /media/cdrom/install/netboot/ubuntu-installer/i386
sudo cp -R boot-screens /srv/tftp/ubuntu-installer/i386
sudo cp initrd.gz linux /srv/tftp/ubuntu-installer/i386

(if youre using the 64-bit CD, substitute all instances of i386 above with amd64 instead.)
.

12. Now we need to setup the initial PXE boot process:

$ sudo mkdir /srv/tftp/pxelinux.cfg
$ sudo nano /srv/tftp/pxelinux.cfg/default

13. You will now be looking at a blank text editor. In this, type the following:
include mybootmenu.cfg
default ubuntu-installer/i386/boot-screens/vesamenu.c32
prompt 0
timeout 100

The timeout 100 line will provide a 10 second countdown before it automatically chooses the default PXE menu
option when you boot into it. If you do not want a timeout, then change this to timeout 0 instead.

14. Press CTRL+X and then Y and then Enter to save your changes.
.

15. Now lets setup our actual boot menu that well be choosing options from:
$ sudo nano /srv/tftp/mybootmenu.cfg

16. Again youll be looking at a blank text editor. Type (or copy & paste) in the following. Indenting text is not
important, but makes it more readable:

menu hshift 13
menu width 49
menu margin 8
menu title My Customised Network Boot Menu
include ubuntu-installer/i386/boot-screens/stdmenu.cfg
menu begin Cool options
default myfirstoption
label myfirstoption
menu label This is a menu item
label mysecondoption
menu label This is another option
menu end

17. Press CTRL+X, then press Y and then Enter to save your changes.
.

18. Finally, we need to change the permissions of all files concerned because TFTP will not read any files unless they
are set to full access:

$ sudo chmod 777 -R /srv

19. Thats PXE server side ready to go. Now we need to tell PXE clients where to find the PXE boot server. If you are
NOT using Ubuntu as your DHCP server, then skip to step 23, otherwise do the following:
$ sudo nano /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

20. This opens up the DHCP config file into your text editor. Assuming your PXE server is at 192.168.0.10, scroll
right to the very bottom of this file and add the following:
next-server 192.168.0.10;
filename "pxelinux.0";

(note the semi-colon on the end)

.

21. Press CTRL+X, then Y and then Enter to save your changes.
.

22. Restart the DHCP daemon with:

$ sudo service dhcp3-server restart

23. If youre using a non-Ubuntu DHCP server, then look for any network boot options and specify the PXE boot
servers IP address and path to the pxelinux.0 file there. For example, in Smoothwall, you would go to

Services->DHCP and then check the Network boot enabled checkbox, then specify 192.168.0.10 (to suit our

tutorial) into the Boot server box and pxelinux.0 in the Boot filename box and /srv/tftp in the Root path
box.

24. We should now be ready to try out our PXE boot server! On your test workstation or VM, enable booting off the
network (in the case of PXE booting a Virtualbox VM, you must ensure that the network adapter is set to

bridged mode instead of NAT and fire away. You should first see your PC launch its PXE agent, looking for a
DHCP server to tell it where the PXE server is:

25. If your PXE server is working, within a few seconds you will see your boot menu!

and if you hit Enter on cool options you will now see a sub-menu showing your two options that we created.
.

26. Well this is all well and good, but the menu currently doesnt actually DO anything other than show us a bunch of
options. How about we provide something, say the Memory Test application from the Ubuntu Alternate Install

CD? Plus well add an option to boot from the first HDD in your system. If your CD is still mounted on the server,
then go back into the terminal youve been working in and copy over the MemTest app as follows:

$ sudo cp /media/cdrom/install/mt86plus /srv/tftp

27. Now lets add a menu entry for it:

$ sudo nano /srv/tftp/mybootmenu.cfg

28. Modify the file so that it now looks like the following (add just the bolded lines):
menu hshift 13
menu width 49
menu margin 8
menu title My Customised Network Boot Menu
include ubuntu-installer/i386/boot-screens/stdmenu.cfg
label Boot from the first HDD
localboot 0
label Memory Tester
kernel mt86plus
menu begin Cool options
default myfirstoption
label myfirstoption
menu label This is a menu item
label mysecondoption
menu label This is another option
menu end

29. Save your changes and exit.

.

30. Ensure the permissions of everything, including our newly copied files, have the correct permissions for TFTP to
work:

$ sudo chmod 777 -R /srv

31. Reboot your test PC via PXE and this time you will see your menu sports the new menu options at the top (you
could have equally placed them at the bottom too):

32. Choosing Memory Tester from the menu will launch the MemTest app straight away, just like off the CD. But

by now you are probably wondering Arent we building off Ubuntu 10.04? Why does the menu have the old logo
on it? Can we change it? Sure, we can!
.

33. The Ubuntu 10.04 installer CD has got the new Ubuntu logo, but for some reason its only saved as a PCX file

which wont work for the PXE boot menu. We can fix this by simply re-saving the PCX file as a PNG file. To start

with, get a copy of the splash.pcx file from the /isolinux directory on the Ubuntu CD. This is the new Ubuntu logo
that you normally see on the CDs boot menu.
.

34. Load this file into an image editor such as The GIMP and re-save it as a PNG file, eg: splash.png (of course
theres nothing stopping you from creating your own graphic either just make sure its no greater than
640480 in size and indexed down to 16 colours).
.

35. Copy the re-saved image file into /srv/tftp/ubuntu-installer/i386/boot-screens and overwrite the original
splash.png file.
.

36. Ensure that the permissions of the newly added file is set correctly again with:
$ sudo chmod 777 -R /srv/tftp

37. And when you reboot your PXE workstation again, your menu will now look like:

And there you have it. A working PXE server with menu!
I will document further uses of the PXE boot facility in future articles, including how to boot the Live CD

environment without the CD or a USB key, setup the ability to use your local Ubuntu mirror as an installation source
for new installs, how to launch tools like Clonezilla and DBAN, and also how to setup a diskless boot system that
uses PXE to do a normal Ubuntu desktop boot directly off the network without a local hard-drive.
Stay tuned! (41091)
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Category(s): Tutorials

Tags: Applications, HowTo, Linux, Lucid, Networking, PXE, Storage, Ubuntu

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