So I am in need to deploy Proxmox on roughly 12 machines and I waas wondering if anyone has a guide or something to setup a PXE server easily. So that I can boot all the machines off the network to install them. There is a github repo for Proxmox PXE but not really sure where to start only done network booting for Windows.
Not sure about easiest. I’ve setup mine (mixture of debian and its variants (kali, ubuntu), opensuse, alma, winxp, win7, win10 and even freedos) using iscsi-based root fs. In the past, I’ve tried NFS and that seems easier but I prefer block-based storage for my diskless nodes.
In addition, debian (which proxmox is based off) of all the distros does not offer direct installation to iscsi lun. My workaround was to install it in local hd first, then modified the initramfs to include all the necessary modules, then updated grub.
By the way, do you already have an ipxe menu going?
DISCLAIMERS!!!
- This setup is only tested on ubuntu-unity-22.04.
- It works* (for stock ubuntu iso boot via pxe w/ console access enabled via ttyS0 bacause I can’t scroll up in virt-manager) but I can’t get proxmox past the initramfs stage. There is an issue I’ve never encountered before w/ nfs(?). Still testing.
- The “Technically-a-Makefile” is the best I can manage at the moment, & there are extra lines in it for qemu-kvm installation via apt-get you can uncomment if you want. I have not yet tried to boot proxmox on a physical machine, but I also can’t imagine why that would be the problem(?).
- The libvirt xml has no storage devices configured. That also could be it(?).
- This “installation” is intended to be used on a host you can (you must) reboot after executing the makefile.
- The server this configures will be set up for !pxe_bios_boot_only! not uefi. That will require some adjustments.
- Forgot to change the network interface names.
(I rechecked the makefile, & it turned out there was an oopsie-doopsie to correct. This should the good one now. Sorry!)
tree_of_files_and_dirs_for_basic_pxe.zip (272.4 KB)
Well, this is embarassing. The installation I’ve been using booted clients reliably yesterday, & is broken now. Please disregard my last (Sorry!).
Better than installing, run proxmox as a tmpfs memory resident operating system. Google tmpfs proxmox openqrm