<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9"> <TITLE>RedHat Linux KickStart HOWTO: Appendix A - Configuring BOOTP/DHCP and NFS</TITLE> <LINK HREF="KickStart-HOWTO-13.html" REL=next> <LINK HREF="KickStart-HOWTO-11.html" REL=previous> <LINK HREF="KickStart-HOWTO.html#toc12" REL=contents> </HEAD> <BODY> <A HREF="KickStart-HOWTO-13.html">Next</A> <A HREF="KickStart-HOWTO-11.html">Previous</A> <A HREF="KickStart-HOWTO.html#toc12">Contents</A> <HR> <H2><A NAME="s12">12. Appendix A - Configuring BOOTP/DHCP and NFS</A></H2> <P> <P>If you're wondering what on earth this BOOTP and DHCP stuff is, more information is available at <A HREF="http://www.dhcp.org/">the DHCP WWW site</A>. NFS is documented separately in detail in the NFS HOWTO, and there's a DHCP mini-HOWTO too. I've tried to provide enough details here to help you get started, whilst not treating the topics in depth - let me know if you think this is overkill. <P> <P>In the BOOTP/DHCP + NFS configuration we're discussing, the KickStart config file should be NFS mountable by the machine being installed from <EM>/kickstart/IPADDR-kickstart</EM> on the BOOTP/DHCP server, where <EM>IPADDR</EM> is the IP address of the new machine, e.g. <EM>/kickstart/198.168.254.254-kickstart</EM> for the machine <EM>198.168.254.254</EM>. <P> <P>You should be able to override this location by returning the <CODE>bf</CODE> parameter (boot file) in your BOOTP/DHCP response. It may even be possible to have this NFS mounted off another machine entirely. <P> <P>To NFS export some directories from an existing Linux box, create the file <EM>/etc/exports</EM> with contents something like: <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> /kickstart *.swedish-chef.org(ro,no_root_squash) /mnt/cdrom *.swedish-chef.org(ro,no_root_squash) </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>Note that if you didn't register the IP addresses you're going to be using in the DNS, you may be told to get lost by the NFS server and/or the RPC portmapper. In this you can probably get away with putting IP address/netmask pairs in the config files, e.g. <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> /kickstart 198.168.254.0/255.255.255.0(ro,no_root_squash) </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>and in <EM>/etc/hosts.allow</EM>: <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> ALL: 194.82.103.0/255.255.255.0: ALLOW </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>This is because most Linux distributions use TCP wrappers to do access control for some or all of the NFS related daemons. Be aware that the <EM>/etc/exports</EM> syntax tends to be different on other Unix variants - the NFS servers bundled with Linux distributions tend to offer a much wider range of options than the ones shipped with other versions of Unix. <P>Be aware that if you include a root password in your KickStart config file, or NFS export directories containing sensitive information, you should take care to expose this information to as few people as possible. This can be done by making the NFS export permissions as fine grained as you can, e.g. by specifying a particular host or subnet to export to rather than a whole domain. If you keep a special IP address free for KickStart installations, everything's nice and simple, but you'll have to change it later - or reconfigure the machine to get its IP address via BOOTP/DHCP. <P> <P>Most NFS servers require you to tell <CODE>mountd</CODE> and <CODE>nfsd</CODE> (on some versions of Unix they're prefixed with a <CODE>rpc.</CODE>) that the <EM>/etc/exports</EM> file has changed - usually by sending a <CODE>SIGHUP</CODE>. There's often a program or script called <CODE>exportfs</CODE>, which will do this for you, e.g. <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> # exportfs -a </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>If you didn't have NFS up and running when this machine was booted, the directories may not be exported automatically. Try rebooting, or running the following programs as root: <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> # portmap # rpc.nfsd # rpc.mountd </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>As noted, on some systems the <CODE>rpc.</CODE> prefix isn't used. In most modern Unix distributions, these programs can be found in the <EM>/usr/sbin</EM> or <EM>/usr/libexec</EM> directories. These might not be in your path already, e.g. if you used <CODE>su</CODE> to become <EM>root</EM>. The <CODE>portmap</CODE> program is also sometimes called <CODE>rpcbind</CODE>, e.g. on Solaris, some versions of <CODE>nfsd</CODE> require a command line argument specifying the number of instances of the server to run, and you may find you also need to run another daemon called <CODE>biod</CODE>. The above should suffice on most (all?) Linux systems. <P> <P>If you're using the CMU BOOTP server with DHCP and dynamic addressing extensions referred to earlier, a sample <EM>/etc/bootptab</EM> entry (<EM>/etc/bootptab</EM> is the normal location of the BOOTP/DHCP configuration file) would look something like this: <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> .dynamic-1:ip=198.168.254.128:T254=0x30:T250="ds=198.168.254.2: dn=swedish-chef.org:sm=255.255.255.0:gw=198.168.254.1: dl=0xFFFFFFFF": </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>(wrapped for clarity) <P> <P>This says to allocate IP addresses dynamically on encountering new machines, starting at <EM>198.168.254.128</EM> and continuing for the next 48 (the hexadecimal value <EM>30</EM>) addresses. Each client will be passed back the value of <EM>T250</EM>. In this case that sets: <P> <P> <UL> <LI> the DNS server <CODE>ds</CODE> to <EM>198.168.254.2</EM></LI> <LI> the domain name <CODE>dn</CODE> to <EM>swedish-chef.org</EM></LI> <LI> the subnet mask <CODE>sm</CODE> to <EM>255.255.255.0</EM></LI> <LI> the default gateway <CODE>gw</CODE> to <EM>198.168.254.1</EM></LI> <LI> the lease length <CODE>dl</CODE> (how long the address is valid for) to "forever"</LI> </UL> <P> <P>There seem to be a number of other versions of this server kicking around which do not support dynamic addressing. For these, you would have to list the hardware (typically Ethernet MAC) address of each to-be-installed machine in <EM>/etc/bootptab</EM>, and the entries would look something like this: <P> <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><CODE> <PRE> bork.swedish-chef.org:ip=198.168.254.128:ha=0000E8188E56: ds=198.168.254.2:dn=swedish-chef.org:sm=255.255.255.0: gw=198.168.254.1:dl=0xFFFFFFFF": </PRE> </CODE></BLOCKQUOTE> <P> <P>(wrapped for clarity) <P> <P>Note that the parameter <CODE>ha</CODE> corresponds to the hardware address of the machine being installed. <P> <P> <P> <HR> <A HREF="KickStart-HOWTO-13.html">Next</A> <A HREF="KickStart-HOWTO-11.html">Previous</A> <A HREF="KickStart-HOWTO.html#toc12">Contents</A> </BODY> </HTML>
