OS setup
Installing OS on bare metal over the network
The OS installation playbook has been tested with Ubuntu 20.04.
If you want to install Debian or Fedora, you should change cloud-init files to match the OS requirements.
The easy way to get cloud-init config files is to copy it from the working machine.
For the Ubuntu 20.04 distribution it is located by /var/log/installer/autoinstall-user-data
Prerequisites
Initial controller
The initial controller is the machine used to bootstrap the servers, we only need it once, you can use your laptop or desktop
A Linux machine that can run Docker (because the host networking driver used for PXE boot only supports Linux, you can use a Linux virtual machine with bridged networking if you're on macOS or Windows).
The following ports should be free and not blocked by firewall:
| service | port | protocol |
|---|---|---|
| DHCP | 67 | UDP |
| TFTP | 69 | UDP |
| HTTP | 80 | TCP |
| DNS | 53 | TCP/UDP |
Tools
- Ansible.
Also some basic collections required:
community.generalandcommunity.docker - Docker and docker-compose
Server machines
Any modern x86_64 computer(s) should work, you can use old PCs, laptops or servers, but they should support: - PXE boot - ability to boot from the network - Wake-on-LAN capability - used to wake the machines up automatically without physically touching the power button
Variables
Vars should be defined in vars/main.yaml file:
| variable | description | notes |
|---|---|---|
| os_image_url | Direct url of OS live-server distribution | Ubuntu daily live iso is here |
| os_username | Username of the user to be created | The same user will be created on all machines |
| os_password | User's password | Should be encrypted |
Hosts information should be defined in hosts file. Before install you should collect the following information about your server machines: - MAC address - Disk name (for example /dev/sda) - Network interface name (for example eno1) - Choose a desired static IP address for each machine
Deployment
OS installation is going to be performed via network using PXE boot. PXE is a client-server interface that allows computers in a network to be booted from the server before deploying the obtained OS image.
The OS deployment workflow via PXE will look like this:
We will use dnsmasq for DHCP + TFTP servers and nginx for HTTP server.
The dnsmasq docker image based on @axtstar's Dockerfile