Monday 28 May 2007

One rule to bind them - part II

In part I of this article I tried reducing the number of steps a user was required to perform to get a system installed via jumpstart and addressed a couple of the goals I mentioned in Building a manageable jumpstart infrastructure using the Solaris Security Toolkit.

My ultimate goal was to reduce steps 1 through 5 and selecting from the build menu to a single interaction such as entering the jumpstart client details into a web page or a configuration file. To eliminate the build menu I had to find a way to inform the client which build it was to install onto itself. The /etc/bootparams file doesn't allow custom parameters to be passed to the client. So after some research and experimentation I switched to DHCP with my own custom client options.

I started by working out the minimum amount of information a client required. I settled on the following DHCP option definitions in dhcp_inittab(4) format:
JSBuild         SITE,           128,    ASCII,     1,      0,      sdmi
JSRevision SITE, 130, ASCII, 1, 0, sdmi
JSOSVersion SITE, 131, ASCII, 1, 0, sdmi
JSBuild
A single word such as FIREWALL, DNS, WEBSERVER etc.

JSRevision
The version of the jumpstart environment. I have all of my finish scripts and configurations under source control using subversion. This option is so that I can build hosts from a specific version of my jumpstart environment.

JSOSVersion
The OS version e.g. Solaris_8, Solaris_9, Solaris_10.
Both JSRevision and JSOSVersion are used on the DHCP server side to craft the paths of a number of jumpstart specific DHCP client options.

These new DHCP options were added to the dhcp inittab in the OS install miniroot:
/srv/install/OS/Solaris_10/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/etc/dhcp/inittab
This was necessary to allow me to run '/sbin/dhcpinfo JSBuild' or '/sbin/dhcpinfo 128' in my begin script.

I chose the ISC DHCPD for my DHCP server as it is extremely easy to configure and very flexible. The dhcpd.conf is:
#
# DHCP Configuration
#

pid-file-name "/var/run/dhcpd.pid";
lease-file-name "/srv/dhcp/dhcpd.leases";

ping-check true;
ddns-update-style none;
authoritative;

default-lease-time 86400;
max-lease-time 86400;

# MY Custom Options
option space MY;
option MY.jumpstart-build code 128 = text;
option MY.jumpstart-revision code 130 = text;
option MY.jumpstart-osversion code 131 = text;

# SUN's Jumpstart DHCP Vendor options
option space SUNW;
option SUNW.root-mount-options code 1 = text;
option SUNW.root-server-address code 2 = ip-address;
option SUNW.root-server-hostname code 3 = text;
option SUNW.root-path-name code 4 = text;
option SUNW.swap-server-address code 5 = ip-address;
option SUNW.swap-file-path code 6 = text;
option SUNW.boot-file-path code 7 = text;
option SUNW.posix-timezone-string code 8 = text;
option SUNW.boot-read-size code 9 = unsigned integer 16;
option SUNW.install-server-address code 10 = ip-address;
option SUNW.install-server-hostname code 11 = text;
option SUNW.install-path code 12 = text;
option SUNW.sysidcfg-path code 13 = text;
option SUNW.jumpstart-cfg-path code 14 = text;
option SUNW.terminal-type code 15 = text;
option SUNW.boot-uri code 16 = text;
option SUNW.http-proxy code 17 = text;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
authoritative;
deny unknown-clients;
next-server jumpserver;
server-name "jumpserver";
option tftp-server-name "jumpserver";
option domain-name "example.com";
option routers 192.168.1.254;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2;
option ntp-servers 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2;

option SUNW.root-server-address jumpserver;
option SUNW.root-server-hostname "jumpserver";
option SUNW.posix-timezone-string "Australia/NSW";

# default OS is Solaris 10
option MY.jumpstart-osversion "Solaris_10";
}
#
# Solaris
#
class "SUNW" {
match if substring(option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 4) = "SUNW";

#
# Serve the correct inetboot file to sun4v hardware platforms.
#
# Note: T2000 is actually SUNW.Sun-Fire-T200
#
if option vendor-class-identifier = "SUNW.Sun-Fire-T1000" or
option vendor-class-identifier = "SUNW.Sun-Fire-T200" {
filename = concat ("inetboot.SUN4V.",
config-option MY.jumpstart-osversion, "-1");
} else {
filename = concat ("inetboot.SUN4U.",
config-option MY.jumpstart-osversion, "-1");
}

option dhcp-parameter-request-list 1,3,6,12,15,42,43,128,129,130;

site-option-space "MY";

vendor-option-space SUNW;

option SUNW.terminal-type "vt100";
option SUNW.root-mount-options "rsize=32768";
option SUNW.install-path = concat("/srv/install/OS/",
config-option MY.jumpstart-osversion);
option SUNW.install-server-address = config-option SUNW.root-server-address;
option SUNW.install-server-hostname = config-option SUNW.root-server-hostname;

# the path to the miniroot
option SUNW.root-path-name = concat(config-option SUNW.install-path,
"/", config-option MY.jumpstart-osversion, "/Tools/Boot");

# the path to correct the version of the jumpstart scripts
option SUNW.jumpstart-cfg-path = concat(config-option SUNW.root-server-hostname,
":/srv/jass/", config-option MY.jumpstart-revision);

# the path to the OS specific sysidcfg file
option SUNW.sysidcfg-path = concat(config-option SUNW.jumpstart-cfg-path,
"/Sysidcfg/", config-option MY.jumpstart-osversion);

# there is always a symlink in /srv/jass to the latest release.
option MY.jumpstart-revision "latest";
}

# Solaris host declarations
include "/srv/dhcp/hosts/solaris";
A host declaration typically looks like this:
host testfw01 {
hardware ethernet 8:0:20:ab:cd:e1;
fixed-address 192.168.1.10;
option MY.jumpstart-build "FIREWALL";
option MY.jumpstart-revision "2.555";
option MY.jumpstart-osversion "Solaris_9";
}
I include the host declarations from a separate file so that I can assign group privileges to users to edit that file only or generate it from the information the user enters into a Django web front-end to a database.

Now on the client I can drop down to the ok prompt and type:
ok boot net:dhcp -s
and when it gets to the root prompt run:
# /sbin/dhcpinfo JSBuild
FIREWALL
# /sbin/dhcpinfo JSRevision
2.555
There you have it. The client now knows which build it is meant to be. You'll notice that I haven't actually saved the user any work yet. In the next part of this series I'll demonstrate how I use this information in the begin script to select a jumpstart profile and pass this information to the JASS driver for post-installation processing.

3 comments:

Shane said...

If only you posted this about a month ago. You would have saved me a ton of work and quite a bit of trial and error.

Good info, I'll be borrowing some of your ideas for our X86 stuff, as we are mostly using wanboot for Sparc except for a few older machine classes.

Matthew Flanagan said...

The development cycle for jumpstart environments is quite tedious and slow. It has taken me around 4 years to gradually develop the system that I have now.

I'm glad you can use some of my ideas. I've got some more articles in the pipeline, some of them relating to flash archives, that you might find useful.

Sreeni said...

I am glad to see your notes, I am looking for the similar toughts to build a I86pc environment auto falsh setup configurations for a client. I hope i will simply my project with your dhcp config. idea.

Thanks for sharing such a nice information.