oldbayindustries / smartos-pxe

Minimal TFTP Server for SmartOS PXE Boot

smartos-pxe

This is a minimal TFTP server to make booting a SmartOS VM under VMware Fusion somewhat easier.

Configuring VMware Fusion

These instructions apply to VMware Fusion 5.X, and might not be applicable to earlier versions.

DHCP

First up, you need to find the dhcpd.conf file for the VMware dhcpd. The interface you probably want is vmnet8, the Shared/NAT Interface. It's likely under /Library/Preferences, e.g.

# find /Library/Preferences -name dhcpd.conf
/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf

Open up that file, and find the subnet block. You want to add the next-server (TFTP Server IP) and filename directives to that subnet. For example:

--- /tmp/orig.conf  2014-02-18 17:14:43.000000000 -0800
+++ /Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf  2014-02-18
16:25:45.000000000 -0800
@@ -25,19 +25,22 @@
 
 subnet 10.88.88.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 10.88.88.128 10.88.88.254;
  option broadcast-address 10.88.88.255;
  option domain-name-servers 10.88.88.2;
  option domain-name localdomain;
  default-lease-time 1800;                # default is 30 minutes
  max-lease-time 7200;                    # default is 2 hours
  option netbios-name-servers 10.88.88.2;
  option routers 10.88.88.2;
+
+ next-server 10.88.88.1;
+ filename "bootfile";
 }

The TFTP Server IP I have used, here, is the one that appears on my vmnet8 interface, as configured by VMware:

# ifconfig vmnet8
vmnet8: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu
1500
  ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08
  inet 10.88.88.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.88.88.255

Finally, bounce the VMware networking services. For VMware Fusion 5, you can do that thus:

# cd "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library"
# ./services.sh --stop
# ./services.sh --start

Now, when you PXE boot your VMs, they will speak to the TFTP server running on your Mac and ask for boot file(s).

TFTP

Install Node.js, then check out this git repository on your Mac. Install its dependencies.

# cd /var/tmp
# git clone git://github.com/jclulow/smartos-pxe.git
...
# cd smartos-pxe
# npm install
...

Start up the server:

# ./run
[17:22:33] smartos-pxe starting up

Grab a platform tarball from smartos.org (e.g. platform-20140207T053435Z.tgz) and extract it into the data/ sub directory of smartos-pxe:

# cd data
# tar xvfz /tmp/platform-20140207T053435Z.tgz
platform-20140207T053435Z/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
platform-20140207T053435Z/i86pc/amd64/...

Create A Virtual Machine

Create a new Virtual Machine with an appropriate OS type -- e.g. Solaris 11 64-bit. Configure the Network Adapter to be Shared/NAT, and to boot from the Network rather than the disk.

When you boot the machine, you should see activity on the TFTP console:

[17:22:33] smartos-pxe starting up
[17:22:39] GET bootfile (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:39] GET bootfile (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:39] GET menu.lst.010050562E349F (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:39] GET menu.lst.010050562E349F (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:39] GET menu.lst.010050562E349F (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:39] GET menu.lst.010050562E349F (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:53] GET /os/20140207/platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:53] GET /os/20140207/platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:54] GET /os/20140207/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive (10.88.88.128)
[17:22:54] GET /os/20140207/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive (10.88.88.128)
...

The machine should boot to the Grub prompt, allowing you to select a SmartOS platform from those you have extracted.

Add Overlay Files

If you want to use Anonymous DTrace, you can do so with relative ease. Simply create the kernel/drv/dtrace.conf and etc/system files as described in Keith's blog post, but put those under data/overlay in the smartos-pxe directory. For example:

# find data -type f
data/grub/pxegrub
data/overlay/etc/system
data/overlay/kernel/drv/dtrace.conf
...
data/platform-20140207/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
data/platform-20140207/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive.gitstatus
data/platform-20140207/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive.hash
data/platform-20140207/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive.manifest
data/platform-20140207/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix
data/platform-20140207/root.password
...

Next time you boot, the software will put the overlay directives into the grub configuration automatically based on the contents of the overlay/ directory and the operating system will load them.