Hi all, Currently with Cobbler, we use yaboot to netboot ppc machines. This works well, but has some limitations on IBM hardware, in particular we can (relatively) easily hit a size limit on the transferred file size, particularly for the initrd of recent distributions [1]. One solution to this issue I came up with was to use GRUB2 to netboot instead. I'd like to know what others things of this and see if I can get some help solving some open problems: 1) Providing the GRUB2 binary? Currently, I rely on someone having already run `grub2-mknetdir --net-diretory=/var/lib/tftpboot` on the Cobbler system. This puts the appropriate netboot binary and GRUB2 modules in /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/grub2/powerpc-ieee1275. This is obviously sub-optimal. Should I add a `cobbler check` line for this? Also, GRUB2 is very modular, which complicates the process of copying the bootloader into the boot location. It seems easier to just leave it alone, but cf. 3) below. 2) How to determine when to use GRUB2 vs. yaboot? GRUB2 support was added in FC18. Should I toggle off the os_version as I've done below? This list is going to grow, I expect, so what is the best way to go about tracking it? I also am curious if perhaps we can actually use GRUB2 everywhere now that it's supported, and can just remove yaboot support -- or make it an option of one or the other, perhaps. Note, and perhaps this is obvious, this is only for the netbooting process and does not determine what bootloader is installed. I've not yet gone back and tested older distributions yet. 3) How to clean-up GRUB2 directory? Currently, yaboot's config files are cleaned by calling rmtree_contents on /var/lib/tftpboot/etc -- this unconditionally clears out all of the contents. GRUB2's machine-specific configuration files, though, live in /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/grub2 and clearing that directory out would also remove the GRUB2 modules. I suppose we could also re-copy these on sync, but that seems like a lot of churn potentially. Here's what I have so far, it's pretty small & minimal pending some input on the above... diff --git a/cobbler/modules/manage_isc.py b/cobbler/modules/manage_isc.py index 5409cfb..801561d 100644 --- a/cobbler/modules/manage_isc.py +++ b/cobbler/modules/manage_isc.py @@ -91,6 +91,7 @@ class IscManager: dhcp_tags = { "default": {} } elilo = "/elilo-3.6-ia64.efi" yaboot = "/yaboot" + grub2 = "/boot/grub2/powerpc-ieee1275/core.elf" for system in self.systems: if not system.is_management_supported(cidr_ok=False): @@ -163,7 +164,11 @@ class IscManager: if distro.arch == "ia64": interface["filename"] = elilo elif distro.arch.startswith("ppc"): - interface["filename"] = yaboot + if distro.os_version.startswith("fedora18") or distro.os_version.startswith("fedora19"): + # Assumes grub2-mknetdir has already been run + interface["filename"] = grub2 + else: + interface["filename"] = yaboot dhcp_tag = interface["dhcp_tag"] if dhcp_tag == "": diff --git a/cobbler/pxegen.py b/cobbler/pxegen.py index 64e8e35..c92dc08 100644 --- a/cobbler/pxegen.py +++ b/cobbler/pxegen.py @@ -272,7 +272,11 @@ class PXEGen: elif working_arch.startswith("ppc"): # Determine filename for system-specific yaboot.conf filename = "%s" % utils.get_config_filename(system, interface=name).lower() - f2 = os.path.join(self.bootloc, "etc", filename) + if distro.os_version.startswith("fedora18") or distro.os_version.startswith("fedora19"): + filename = "grub.cfg-" + filename + f2 = os.path.join(self.bootloc, "boot/grub2", filename) + else: + f2 = os.path.join(self.bootloc, "etc", filename) # Link to the yaboot binary f3 = os.path.join(self.bootloc, "ppc", filename) @@ -553,7 +557,10 @@ class PXEGen: elif arch == "ia64": template = os.path.join(self.settings.pxe_template_dir,"pxesystem_ia64.template") elif arch.startswith("ppc"): - template = os.path.join(self.settings.pxe_template_dir,"pxesystem_ppc.template") + if distro.os_version.startswith("fedora18") or distro.os_version.startswith("fedora19"): + template = os.path.join(self.settings.pxe_template_dir,"grub2_pxe_ppc.template") + else: + template = os.path.join(self.settings.pxe_template_dir,"pxesystem_ppc.template") elif arch.startswith("arm"): template = os.path.join(self.settings.pxe_template_dir,"pxesystem_arm.template") elif distro and distro.os_version.startswith("esxi"): diff --git a/templates/pxe/grub2_pxe_ppc.template b/templates/pxe/grub2_pxe_ppc.template new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc0bb9c --- /dev/null +++ b/templates/pxe/grub2_pxe_ppc.template @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +set timeout 0 +menuentry 'install' { + echo "Loading install kernel..." + linux $kernel_path $append_line + echo "Loading initrd..." + initrd $initrd_path +} [1] On POWER machines, what actually happens is not only the yaboot binary gets tftp'd via the system firmware (aka SMS), but the kernel and initrd are as well. GRUB2 in contrast does the tftp'ing itself.